Kant: Anthropology

Saturation, intoxication to the medias of realization and porsuit of happyness.

In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant declares that virtue “can and must be taught.” This claim raises two problems. First, it is in tension with Kant’s emphasis on the absolute moral responsibility that each individual agent owes to her transcendental freedom. Second, it raises the question of how the empirical events that constitute moral education can have an impact on atemporal moral choices. Concerning the second issue, I argue that Kant has a coherent framework for representing how empirical conditions can (...) influence (“affect”) the noumenal will without determining it to action. Regarding the first problem, I argue that although a good moral education is mostly only a facilitating rather than a strictly necessary condition for moral virtue, there is one moral capacity that does require good moral teaching: namely, the practical power of judgment that correctly applies wide, general duties of virtue to particular cases. (shrink)

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his core philosophy. They also assume that racism contradicts his moral theory. Lu-Adler challenges both assumptions. She shows how Kant’s raciology—divided into racialism and racism—is integral to his philosophical system as a whole. She also rejects the individualistic approach to Kant and racism. Instead, she uses the notion of racism as ideological formation to demonstrate how Kant, from his (...) social location both as a prominent scholar and as a lifelong educator, participated in the formation of modern racist ideology. -/- As a scholar, Kant developed a groundbreaking scientific theory of race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature or Naturforscher. As an educator, he transmitted denigrating depictions of the racialized others and imbued them with normative relevance. In both roles, he presented a worldview that excluded nonwhites from such goods as recognitional respect and candidacy for cultural and moral achievements. Some effects of this worldview are still palpable today. Scholars who research and teach Kant’s philosophy therefore have an unshakable burden to take part in the ongoing antiracist struggles, through their teaching practices as well as their scholarship. And they must do so in a color-conscious as opposed to colorblind way, with a pragmatic attention to nonideal social realities and a clear normative orientation toward substantial racial justice, equality, and inclusion. (shrink)

Hope is understood to be a significant part of human experience, including for motivating behaviour, promoting happiness, and justifying a conception of the self as having agency. Yet substantial gaps remain regarding the development of the concept of hope in the history of philosophy. This collection addresses this gap by reconstructing and analysing a variety of approaches to hope in late 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy. In 1781, Kant's idea of a “rational hope” shifted the terms of discussion about hope (...) and its role for human self-understanding. In the 19th century, a wide-ranging debate over the meaning and function of hope emerged in response to his work. Drawing on expertise from a diverse group of contributors, this collection explores perspectives on hope from Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, J. S. Beck, J. C. Hoffbauer, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Kierkegaard and others. Chapters consider different aspects of the concept of hope, including the rationality of hope, appropriate and inappropriate applications of hope and the function of hope in relation to religion and society. The result is a valuable collection covering a century of the role of hope in shaping cognitive attitudes and constructing social, political and moral communities. As an overview of philosophical approaches to hope during this period, including by philosophers who are seldom studied today, the collection constitutes a valuable resource for exploring the development of this important concept in post-Kantian German philosophy. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 281-289, April 2022.

According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and “Toward Perpetual Peace”. On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best suggest that Kant mentioned it as a (...) cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved “Negroes” was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant’s part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of “Negroes” as natural slaves. (shrink)

A testimony is somebody else’s reported experience of what has happened. It is an indispensable source of knowledge. It only gives us historical cognition, however, which stands in a complex relation to rational or philosophical cognition: while the latter presupposes historical cognition as its matter, one needs the architectonic “eye of a philosopher” to select, interpret, and organize historical cognition. Kant develops this rationalist theory of testimony. He also practices it in his own work, especially while theorizing about race as (...) a subject of natural philosophy. In three dedicated essays on this subject, he treats race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature (Naturforscher), who (as Kant puts it in the first Critique) learns from nature “like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them.” This view underwrites Kant’s use of travel reports (a type of testimony) in developing and defending his theory of race. (shrink)

This chapter explores what Kant means by “life”, the “feeling of life”, the “feeling of the promotion of life”, and related notions, such as the idea of a “vital power”, through the contrast between Kant’s account of the beautiful and his account of the sublime. We argue that it is significant that Kant characterizes the feeling of the beautiful as a feeling of the promotion of life but the feeling of the sublime in terms of vital powers. We account for (...) this difference by showing that in experiences of beauty, we are aware of ourselves as rational but embodied human beings, as part of nature. In the feeling of the sublime, by contrast, we are aware of ourselves as pure rational beings. This entails that in the beautiful, we experience nature as deeply life-promoting, while in the sublime, we experience the independence of our supersensible vocation from nature. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

RESEÑA / RESSENYA / REVIEW Elogio de la razón mundana. Antropología y política en Kant, por Nuria Sánchez Madrid.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Alix Cohen argues that the function of feeling in Kantian psychology is to appraise and orient activity. Thus she sees feeling and agency as importantly connected by Kant’s lights. I endorse this broader claim, but argue that feeling, on her account, cannot do the work of orientation that she assigns to it.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Intentar explicar el origen, evolución y violación de un tabú considerado casi universal en las sociedades humanas no es una empresa sencilla dado su carácter polifacético; sin embargo, ello no ha impedido que en muchos ordenamientos jurídicos sea empleado ese sentimiento de repulsión o asco como un elemento para criminalizar una relación sexual aparentemente ofensiva. El artículo sostiene que el matrimonio es la única forma en que las prácticas sexuales entre parientes en condición de igualdad pueden tener lugar. Para ello: (...) I. Presentaremos algunas teorías que ofrecen respuestas a las incógnitas en torno al tabú, II. Veremos por qué para Kant el incesto es un crimina carnis contra naturam en un caso, y secundum naturam en el otro. III. Examinaremos qué es el matrimonio para el filósofo y por qué constituye un ideal regulativo-práctico de las relaciones sexuales humanas. Por último, consideramos argumentos en contra de esta propuesta. (shrink)

Es ist ein verbreitetes Phänomen unserer moralischen Urteilspraxis, dass wir herausragende moralische Handlungen bisweilen als moralisch wertvoll und dennoch nicht als moralisch geboten beurteilen, d.i. als supererogatorisch. Für die kantische Ethik stellt diese Beobachtung eine Herausforderung dar. Nicht nur verfügt sie nicht über eine Kategorie der Supererogation, vielmehr scheinen die wenigen Stellen, an denen sich Kant explizit mit moralisch herausragendem Handeln befasst, auf den ersten Blick dafür zu sprechen, dass eine solche Urteilspraxis schlicht als fehlerhaft zurückzuweisen ist. Dagegen arbeitet die (...) Studie heraus, dass die kantische Ethik einen theoretischen Rahmen für eine nuancierte moralpsychologische Analyse dieser Praxis bietet: Moralisch herausragende Handlungen als supererogatorisch zu betrachten erweist sich demnach einerseits als vielschichtige Gefährdung der eigenen Moralität, andererseits vermag das gute Exempel anderer unter bestimmten Bedingungen durchaus zur Beförderung der eigenen Moralität beizutragen. Die Studie trägt zu einem differenzierteren Verständnis der kantischen Ethik bei und weist eine genuin kantische Perspektive auf Supererogation als systematisch anschlussfähig an aktuelle Debatten aus. (shrink)

O presente artigo examina a natureza da investigação antropológica que Kant executou nos seus cursos sobre geografia física. Se, por um lado, a sua relação com a física empírica é assegurada, por outro, a incorporação de ambos os objetos do sentido interno, alma e ser humano, na abordagem cosmológica da investigação empírica da natureza humana gera questionamentos sobre a articulação disciplinar e metodológica pressupostas no Conhecimento do Mundo. Será mostrado que a investigação antropológica de Kant desde o início procurou assegurar (...) uma combinação sistemática entre diferentes procedimentos científicos que visam o conhecimento da natureza humana e que este é justamente o caso do emprego geográfico do conceito ontológico de alma no esclarecimento da diversidade de temperamentos e de gostos da espécie humana. (shrink)

Whether Kant’s late legal theory and his theory of race are contradictory in their account of colonialism has been a much-debated question that is also of highest importance for the evaluation of the Enlightenment’s contribution to Europe’s colonial expansion and the dispossession and enslavement of native and black peoples. This article discusses the problem by introducing the discourse on barbarism. This neglected discourse is the original and traditional European colonial vocabulary and served the justification of colonialism from ancient Greece throughout (...) the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. Kant’s explicit rejection of this discourse and its prejudices reveals his early critical stance toward colonial judgements of native peoples even before he developed his legal theory. This development of his critical position can be traced in his writings on race: although he makes racist statements in these texts, his theory of race is not meant to ground moral judgements on ‘races’ or a racial hierarchy but to defend the unity of mankind under the given empirical reality of colonial hierarchies. (shrink)

For Kant, we cannot understand how to approach moral education without confronting the radical evil of humanity. But if we start out, as Kant thinks we do, from a morally corrupt state, how...

With this paper I analyze Kant’s account of the human vocation to cosmopolitanism discussed in the last section of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (7:321-333) and show how Kant’s notion of cosmopolitanism requires the cooperation of pure reason and pragmatic anthropology. My main thesis is that pure reason provides regulative ideas, thereby maintaining a foundational role, and pragmatic anthropology provides empirical evidence, thereby reinforcing the theoretical and practical status of reason’s ideas. In developing my analysis, I argue (...) that Kant reframes the question ‘What is the human being?’ in a non-essential way, foregrounds a moral practical concern, and assigns freedom an unprecedented role. Finally, I relate my analysis to two questions frequently discussed in Kant scholarship, namely the problem of whether the Anthropology has only a pragmatic or also a moral scope and the problem of the relation between the Anthropology and Kant’s critical system. (shrink)

With this paper I analyze Kant’s account of the human vocation to cosmopolitanism discussed in the last section of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and show how Kant’s notion of cosmopolitanism requires the cooperation of pure reason and pragmatic anthropology. My main thesis is that pure reason provides regulative ideas, thereby maintaining a foundational role, and pragmatic anthropology provides empirical evidence, thereby reinforcing the theoretical and practical status of reason’s ideas. In developing my analysis, I argue that (...) Kant reframes the question ‘What is the human being?’ in a non-essential way, foregrounds a moral practical concern, and assigns freedom an unprecedented role. Finally, I relate my analysis to two questions frequently discussed in Kant scholarship, namely the problem of whether the Anthropology has only a pragmatic or also a moral scope and the problem of the relation between the Anthropology and Kant’s critical system. (shrink)

A challenge to Kant’s less known duty of self-knowledge comes from his own firm view that it is impossible to know oneself. This paper resolves this problem by considering the duty of self-knowledge as involving the pursuit of knowledge of oneself as one appears in the empirical world. First, I argue that, although Kant places severe restrictions on the possibility of knowing oneself as one is, he admits the possibility of knowing oneself as one appears using methods from empirical anthropology. (...) Second, I show that empirical knowledge of oneself is fairly reliable and is, in fact, considered as morally significant from Kant’s moral anthropological perspective. Taking these points together, I conclude that Kant’s duty of self-knowledge exclusively entails the pursuit of empirical self-knowledge. (shrink)

This article discusses the common ground between William James and the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Recent commentators on this overlap have characterised philosophical anthropology as combining science and Kantian teleology, for instance in Kant’s seminal definition of anthropology as being concerned with what the human being makes of itself, as distinct from what attributes it is given by nature. This article registers the tension between Kantian thinking, which reckons to ground experience in a priori categories, and William James’s psychology, which (...) begins and ends with experience. It explores overlap between James’s approach and the characteristic holism of 18th-century philosophical anthropology, which centres on the idea of understanding and analysing the human as a whole, and presents the main anthropological elements of James’s position, namely his antipathy to separation, his concerns about the binomial terms of traditional philosophy, his preference for experience over substances, his sense that this holist doctrine of experience shows a way out of sterile impasses, a preference for description over causation, and scepticism. It then goes on to register the common ground with key ideas in the work of anthropologists from around 1800, along with some references to anthropologists who come in James’s wake, in particular Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, in order to reconceptualise the connection between James’s ideas and the tradition of anthropological thinking in German letters since the late 18th-century, beyond its characterisation as a combination of scientific positivism and teleology. (shrink)

The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of sensation. On this level it seems to transcend issues of race and racism, but Another Mind-Body Problem demonstrates that racial distinctions have been an integral part of the discourse since the Modern period in philosophy. Reading figures such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant in their historical contexts, John Harfouch uncovers discussions of mind and body that engaged (...) closely with philosophical and scientific notions of race in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, in particular in understanding how the mind unites with the body at birth and is then passed on through sexual reproduction. Kant argued that a person’s exterior body and interior psyche are bound together, that non-White people lacked reason, and that this lack of reason was carried on through reproduction such that non-Whites were an example of a union of mind and body without full being. Charting the development of this phenomenon from sixteenth-century medical literature to modern-day race discourse, Harfouch argues for new understandings of Descartes’s mind-body problem, Fanon’s experience of being ‘not-yet human,’ and the place of racism in relation to one of philosophy’s most enduring and canonical problems. -/- “Harfouch has written an important book on the intersection of race and the Western construction of the mind-body problem … This book is a significant resource for theorists dealing with race and decolonization issues, but it is more significant for the critique of philosophy itself and the continued teaching of mind-body issues. Readers will need some knowledge of philosophy, but the volume is in general accessible. It should be required reading for scholars of philosophy. Harfouch establishes a logically strong argument and makes a unique contribution to the field.” — CHOICE. (shrink)

A Review of Paweł Sikora’s Pojęciowa treść percepcji w filozofii nowożytnej, Wyd. UMCS, Lublin 2016.

Last year, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” celebrated the 25 th anniversary. This article confines to this very special event and analyzes three important anthropological studies that deal with moral components of human being. The research directions have been formed at the Department since its establishment in 1992. -/- The first part of the article focuses mainly on the Kantian studies. According to Kant’s anthropology, human nature should be explored on two levels: empirical and intelligible. (...) Empirical level deals with general causality and considers the human being as the one entirely determined by nature. The second level considers the man from the perspective of freedom, moral activity, capacity to create aims and legislation. The research primarily gives a general scale of Kantian intelligible anthropology, which appears as a two-dimensional framework and consists of moral anthropological perspective and the one which Kant calls anthroponymy. Only the combination of these two aspects can allow us to comprehend the human nature as a whole. -/- The second section of this article will shed a light on the Nietzschean anthropological theory. The paper elucidates three basic dimensions of Nietzschean critical anthropology. First of all, of the author comments on Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality. Next, he articulates the Nietzschean idea of self-overcoming. Finally, the author identifies the main features of his genealogy of morality. All those components bound together can provide a wide horizon of Nietzschean opinion on the ethical dimension of human being. -/- The last part of this article considers modern techno-anthropology in a broad sense. The problem of human and technology relation is considered in an ethical dimension, which unites all the three research directions. In this section, the author discusses the main components of technological mediation and non-neutrality. Using these two concepts, he proves that human nature (even in its ethical dimension) is not an autonomous and independent actor but the one that is deeply connected with the world and others through technology. -/- . (shrink)

It seems commonplace to talk about Plato and eros, but it seems peculiar to write about Immanuel Kant and sexuality. In fact, Kant’s statements about the dangers of masturbation in his On Education give the impression of a conservative and even unenlightened attitude. Yet highly progressive aspects manifest in the same text. A reasonable dealing with our »mere animal nature« does not mean its suppression. A public discussion about sexuality, ›Sexualaufklärung‹ (sex education), did not exist before the middle of the (...) 20th century. People were mostly depicted as asexual creatures in biology teaching books. Female sexuality out of wedlock was taboo. I will show that Kant’s marital law and his aim of pedagogical enlightenment are already much more emancipated. Kant argued for certain liberties concerning sexual identity and thereby anticipated gender-theories that emerged in the later 20th century. He also argued that pedagogical enlightenment must deal with the »Ge- schlechtsneigung« (sexual attraction) explicitly. It would be dangerous not to talk about this issue, Kant warned, which nature had tried to combine »with all sorts of morality«. I will illuminate this ambivalent pedagogical concern as paradigmatic for the Enlightenment. It is inevitably bound to the complex ideas of transcendental vs. practical freedom and duty. Quite interestingly, Kant’s notion of female education centered around freedom and more specifically, autonomy, while male education foregrounded duty. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo examinar cómo el legado kantiano de la razón crítica sigue vigente, pues se sostiene en un imperativo teórico fundado en la autonomía. Tal como argumento, este imperativo «categórico-teórico» se estructura gracias a la primacía de la razón práctica por sobre la razón teórica. El ensayo está estructurado en tres secciones. En la primera discuto brevemente el compromiso con la verdad propio de la ética de Sócrates y Platón, quienes inauguran el racionalismo crítico, según Popper. Luego, (...) en la segunda sección examino la filosofía kantiana y su propuesta, la cual ciertamente influye en el «Tratado contra el Método» de Paul Feyerabend. Finalmente, en la tercera sección, analizo la conexión entre razón crítica y razón teórica. En particular, muestro que la primera gobierna la segunda, y que la autonomía es parte de la naturaleza racional humana. Dicha naturaleza ciertamente explica por qué la razón crítica sigue vigente en la época contemporánea. (shrink)

Kant's conception of women is complex. Although he struggles to bring his considered view of women into focus, a sympathetic reading shows it not to be anti-feminist and to contain important arguments regarding human nature. Kant believes the traditional male-female distinction is unlikely to disappear, but he never proposes the traditional gender ideal as the moral ideal; he rejects the idea that such considerations of philosophical anthropology can set the framework for morality. This is also why his moral works clarifies (...) that all citizens, including women have the right, and should be encouraged to strive towards an active condition. (shrink)

In Kant scholarship, there has long been a debate about the connection between his political and ethical thought. In his works concerned with political theory, such as the Metaphysics of Morals, Perpetual Peace, or An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, he concerns himself with coercively enforceable principles by which a society can be organised. In his works on ethics, such as The Groundwork to a Metaphysics of Morals, or The Critique of Practical Reason, he is concerned with principles (...) of morality, which require free and unconstrained action. Prima facie, the realms of politics and ethics in Kant’s thought thus appear to be incompatible. This thesis will close the gap between Kant’s ethics and politics through an examination of his anthropological works. The thesis will argue that Kant’s philosophical understanding of human nature, i.e. his “philosophical” anthropology, necessitates a connection between his ethics and politics. The project begins with a reading of Kant’s anthropological texts to show that his concern with human nature was directly related to politics and to ethics. This will allow the thesis to then discuss the way in which human nature necessitates politics as a condition of possibility for ethical deliberation to occur. Finally, having shown the necessity of politics for ethics, and thus their necessary connection, the thesis will present an overview of Kant’s political philosophy in light of this connection to show precisely the way in which politics supports rational ethical deliberation. These considerations will allow for the debate about the connection between Kant’s politics and ethics to be settled, and provide us with an understanding of the depth of Kant’s concern with human nature. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed light on Nietzsche’s late investigation of the Western human being, with particular reference to Twilight of the Idols. I shall argue that this investigation can be seen as a “pragmatic anthropology,” according to the meaning that Kant gave to this notion in 1798. Although the paper focuses on Nietzsche’s thought, an analysis of Kant’s anthropology and the comparison between and Nietzsche’s late views of the human being, will show both their differences and (...) similarities on the topic. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology, which formed the basis of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, contain many observations on human nature, culture and psychology and illuminate his distinctive approach to the human sciences. The essays in the present volume, written by an international team of leading Kant scholars, offer the first comprehensive scholarly assessment of these lectures, their philosophical importance, their evolution and their relation to Kant's critical philosophy. They explore a wide range of topics, including Kant's account (...) of cognition, the senses, self-knowledge, freedom, passion, desire, morality, culture, education and cosmopolitanism. The volume will enrich current debates within Kantian scholarship as well as beyond, and will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of Kant, the history of anthropology, the philosophy of psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

In the past few decades a remarkable change occurred in Kant scholarship: the "other" Kant has been discovered, i.e. the one of the doctrine of virtue and the anthropology. Through the rediscovery of Kant's investigations into the empirical and sensuous aspects of knowledge, our understanding of Kant's philosophy has been enriched by an important element that has allowed researchers to correct supposed deficiencies in Kant's work. In addition, further questions concerning the nature of Kant's philosophy itself have been formulated: the (...) more the "other" Kant comes to the fore, the stronger the question concerning the connection between pure philosophy and empirical investigation becomes. The aim of this study is to show that the psychological and anthropological interpretations of Kant's pure philosophy are not convincing and at the same time to illustrate some connections between his critical and anthropological investigations by means of an analysis of the theory of the faculties. Against both a "transcendental psychological" and an "anthropological" reading, the book presents Kant's theory of the facultiesas a constitutive part of his critical philosophy andshows that there is a close connection between Kant's pure philosophy and his moral aesthetic. (shrink)