The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment can be, or otherwise ought to be, regarded as a transcendental phenomenology of hope. Kant states repeatedly that CPoJ mediates between the first two Critiques, or between the theoretical knowledge we arrive at on the basis of understanding and reason’s foundational role for practical philosophy. In other words, exercising the power of judgment is implicated whenever we try to bring together the (...) ethical issue of strictly determining our actions on the one hand and the necessity to act in the physical world on the other. We will argue that this mediating function is properly understood only if the ideations produced by self-understanding are characterized as objects of rationally required hope or fear. (shrink)

There has been a considerable amount of research concerning Kantian hope, but focused on the perspective of Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. In this essay, I will present the Kantian theory of theoretical hope, as found in the first Critique. My argument first establishes that there is such a thing as Kantian theoretical hope. And the second part of the argument defines Kantian theoretical hope as a priori, necessary, and universal within the use of reason and understanding, or, in Kantian (...) terms, as a transcendental concept. (shrink)

Amitai Etzioni’s From Empire to Community traces the fundamental socio-political problem of our time to that of maintaining human primacy. He argues that the tendency of our technological means is to overtake our ability to assign worthy goals for their application. His analysis of the possibility of forming a cosmopolitan order can be applied fruitfully in a posthuman context in which emerging technologies pose a challenge for constructing a posthuman political and moral order. In this context; the task is to (...) maintain posthuman primacy. I show that there are several converging lines of thought and supportive social factors that underwrite the construction of a posthuman cosmopolitan order. I argue that self-consistent recursivity must be applied to the very procedural character of reflexive modernization of institutions and to the creation of posthuman beings that may participate in the creation of a future cosmopolitan social order. (shrink)