The ArgumentThe main subject examined in this paper is Immanuel Kant's controversy withPhilosophisches Magazinregarding Kant's new theory of judgments. J. A. Eberhard, editor ofPhilosophisches Magazin, and his colleagues wanted to vindicate the Wollfian traditional concept of judgments by undermining Kant's claims. As will be demonstrated, their arguments were effective mainly in exposing the ambiguity that was inherent in Kant's concept of the synthetic a priori; an ambiguity that resulted from Kant's desire—central to his critique of metaphysics—to present judgments pertaining to (...) mathematics, (dogmatic) metaphysics, and pure natural science as judgments which shared a common form. Exposing this ambiguity was not the intended result, and it was insufficient for the purpose of vindicating the Wollfian tradition. The contributors toPhilosophisches Magazinignored the important properties shared by the class of judgments falling under Kant's concept of synthetic a priori judgments. They also ignored the fact that their position was unable to account for the logical phenomena that motivated Kant to present a new theory of judgments. On the other hand, Kant's theory of judgments was insensitive to the important differences that exist among the distinct types of judgments falling under his concept of a synthetic a priori judgment. This latter point is clearly shown in the controversy regarding the novelty of Kant's concept of a synthetic a priori judgment, and in the controversy regarding the function of intuitions within synthetic judgments.A result of the controversy was that Kant's concept of the synthetic a priori, which he believed to be an exact concept, was revealed to be a metaphor: no more than an invitation to view certain intellectual fields in the light of others. On the other hand, Eberhard and his colleagues failed to come up with satisfactory answers to Kant's questions within their traditional concept of judgment. Both parties refused to acknowledge this result. Consequently, the search for a new logic, a new architectonic order, and a new unity within reason became a general problem for the new generation of philosophers. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that some of the most basic commitments of Kantian ethics can be understood as grounded in the dynamic of sense that Merleau-Ponty describes in his Phenomenology of Perception. Specifically, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s account supports the importance of universalizability as a test for the moral permissibility of particular acts as well as the idea that the binding character of the moral law is given as something like a fact of reason. But I also argue that (...) Merleau-Ponty’s account of reversibility suggests an important dimension of moral experience that is given in the experience of contact and that is underthematized in moral philosophies like Kant’s that emphasize the role of universalizability. Finally, I advance a positive account of moral experience that is centered on the idea of tact as ambiguous imperative. (shrink)

This paper considers Kant's understanding of conceptual representation in light of his view of geometry.

Officially, for Kant, judgments are analytic iff the predicate is "contained in" the subject. I defend the containment definition against the common charge of obscurity, and argue that arithmetic cannot be analytic, in the resulting sense. My account deploys two traditional logical notions: logical division and concept hierarchies. Division separates a genus concept into exclusive, exhaustive species. Repeated divisions generate a hierarchy, in which lower species are derived from their genus, by adding differentia(e). Hierarchies afford a straightforward sense of containment: (...) genera are contained in the species formed from them. Kant's thesis then amounts to the claim that no concept hierarchy conforming to division rules can express truths like '7+5=12.' Kant is correct. Operation concepts ( ) bear two relations to number concepts: and are inputs, is output. To capture both relations, hierarchies must posit overlaps between concepts that violate the exclusion rule. Thus, such truths are synthetic. (shrink)