En este trabajo se analizan algunas observaciones formuladas por Kant respecto de las dificultades implicadas en la selección y uso de los términos lingüísticos en el proceso de escritura filosófica. Consideramos que dicho análisis no sólo resulta relevante para una reconstrucción general de su concepción acerca del lenguaje, sino que proporciona asimismo elementos significativos para analizar la distinción entre concepto y palabra formulada en el marco de la epistemología crítica. Observaremos asimismo que, si bien en esta sección preliminar de la (...) “Dialéctica” se identifican importantes problemáticas que serán discutidas intensamente a partir del posterior desarrollo de la Filosofía del lenguaje, la estrategia metodológica adoptada por Kant para la resolución de los problemas específicos abordados en la primera Crítica impide que tales problemáticas sean visualizadas como aspectos significativos para la determinación de los límites del conocimiento humano. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

Salomo Friedlaender was a prolific German-Jewish philosopher, poet, and satirist. His Kant for Children is intended to help young people learn about Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Friedlaender writes, “Morality is inherent in us organically. But its abstract formula should be imprinted on schoolchildren.” Published in 1924, 200 years after Kant’s birth, the book sparked interest in some quarters, attracting the attention of the first Newbery Award winner, Hendrik Willem van Loon, who corresponded with Friedlaender in 1933 requesting an English translation. That (...) didn’t happen. This is the first English translation of the book. During the National Socialist period, Kant for Children troubled the Nazis. They banned Friedlaender’s work. Rebecca Hanf, friend of Ernst Marcus, the philosopher who claimed to have resurrected Kant, recognized that Friedlaender’s Kant for Children could counter the Nazi appropriation of Kant and realign Kant with egalitarianism and anti-fascist politics, meaning the book has contemporary relevance in light of an international resurgence of fascism. A lifelong student of Kant’s works, Friedlaender deserves a wider audience among Kant scholars and students. This first English translation includes an introduction to Friedlaender as well as essays by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Sarah Holtman, Robert Louden, Kate Moran, Krista Thomason, and Jens Timmermann. For translating and editing Kant for Children, Bruce Krajewski received The 2023 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. The Robert B. Silvers Foundation is a charitable trust established by a bequest of the late Robert B. Silvers, a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, with the aim of supporting writers in the fields of long-form literary and arts criticism, the intellectual essay, political analysis, and social reportage. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things,—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

In his notes and lectures on anthropology, Kant explicitly refers to Alexander Gerard's 1774 Essay on Genius, and his own position that genius is necessary for art but not for science is clearly a response to Gerard. Kant does not explicitly mention Gerard's 1759 Essay on Taste, but it was probably an influence on his own conception of free play, and in any case a comparison of the two theories of aesthetic response is instructive. Gerard's development of a version of (...) the theory of free play without Kant's assumptions that aesthetic judgments must be independent of concepts and yet always intersubjectively valid allows him to accommodate a variety of facts about aesthetic experience in general and our experience of the fine arts in particular more readily and more fully than Kant can, especially those concerning the affective dimension of our experience of art. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded on the conception of (...) disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

Paul Crowther, in his book, The Kantian Sublime (1989), works to reconstruct Kant's aesthetics in order to make its continued relevance to contemporary aesthetic concerns more visible. The present article remains within the area of Crowther's "cognitive" sublime, to show that there is much space for expanding upon Kantian varieties of the sublime, particularly in art.

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)

Abstract In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant refers to the pleasure that we feel when judging that an object is beautiful as the pleasure of "mere reflection". Yet Kant never makes explicit what exactly is the relationship between the activity of "mere reflection" and the feeling of pleasure. I discuss several contemporary accounts of the pleasure of taste and argue that none of them is fully accurate, since, in each case, they leave open the possibility that one (...) can reflect without having a feeling of pleasure, and hence allow a possible skepticism of taste. I then present my own account, which can better explain why Kant thinks that when one reflects one must also have a feeling of pleasure. My view, which emphasizes the role of attention in Kant, depicts well what we do when we judge something to be beautiful. It can also suggest a way to explain the relation between judgments of taste and moral feeling, and begin to show how the faculty of feeling fills a gap in the system of our cognitive faculties. (shrink)

What are the conditions required for becoming better human beings? What are our limitations and possibilities? I understand “becoming better” as a combined improvement process bringing persons “up from” a negative condition and “up to” a positive one. Today there is a tendency to understand improvement in a one-sided way as a movement up to the mastery of cognitive skills, neglecting the negative conditions that can make these skills mis-educative. I therefore tell six stories in the Western tradition about conditions (...) for a combined improvement process. The first three stories belong to our cultural ABC: an Aristotelian story about moral wisdom which brings people up from being enslaved by passions and up to a good life of virtues; a Biblical story about God’s word bringing listeners up from a self-centred life and up into creative work as God’s fellow workers, and a short Cave story by Plato about liberation—up from living by common illusions and up to enlightenment from what is perfectly good. The subsequent three stories interpret and actualise these basic stories in different ways: a story about moral wisdom and divine love (Thomas Aquinas), a story about individual freedom and rationality (Immanuel Kant), and a story about the love that builds us up as equal human beings (Søren Kierkegaard). These stories may directly guide us adults—and indirectly the children and youth who learn from our examples—when we struggle to become better human beings. (shrink)

The paper asks about the difficulty of reading Schelling's work today given the historical biases that dominate contemporary philosophical inquiry. But if we cannot succeed as the readers Schelling himself appears to be looking for, this does not already have to mean that his work cannot speak to our time. Such a possibility, however, presupposes that we consider Schelling's work as it is inseparably connected to a critique of the modern project and as it points thereby to the monstrous discord (...) that defines human philosophical discourse as such. In particular, the paper considers the Kantian opposition between faith and knowledge and claims that this opposition itself appears to establish a kind of limit for philosophical inquiry today. In this context, some reflections are offered on the history of European nihilism and the death of God. The paper concludes by giving several indications of how Schelling's thought promises to subvert this opposition and this limit. (shrink)

One of the most controversial issues to emerge in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, i.e., his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte’s view regarding the ‘final end’ of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While (...) I think each interpretive position contains an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte’s normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. (shrink)

It has long been disputed whether Kant's transcendental idealism requires two worlds ? one of appearances and one of things in themselves ? or only one. The one-world view must be wrong if it claims that individual spatio-temporal things can be identified with particular things in themselves, and if it fails to take seriously the doctrine of double affection; versions that insist on one world, without making claims about the identity of individual things, cannot say in what way the world (...) as we know it and the world of things in themselves can be ?the same?. The two-world view must be wrong if it denies Kant's empirical realism, or offers a phenomenalist interpretation of it. On moral grounds Kant ?identifies? each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique, Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. In this respect something a bit like the one-world theory might make more sense for the first edition than for the second; but in both cases there is room to speak of two worlds as well. Talk of the number of worlds is metaphorical, and both metaphors have their dangers. (shrink)

Many scholars claimed that, according to Immanuel Kant, some judgements lack a truth-value: analytic judgements, judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience, judgements of perception, and non-assertoric judgements. However, no one has undertaken an extensive examination of the textual evidence for those claims. Based on an analysis of Kant's texts, I argue that: (1) according to Kant, only judgements of perception are not truth-apt. All other judgements are truth-apt, including analytic judgements and judgements about items of which humans (...) cannot have experience. (2) Kant sometimes states that truth-apt judgements are actual bearers of truth or falsity only when they are taken to state what is actually the case. Kant calls these judgements assertoric. Other texts ascribe truth and falsity to judgements, regardless of whether they are assertoric. Kant's views on truth-aptness raise challenges for correspondentist and coherentist interpretations of Kant's theory of truth; they rule out the identification of Kant's crucial notion of objective validity with truth-aptness; and they imply that Kant was not a verificationist about truth or meaning. (shrink)

Kant is well known for his restrictive conception of proper science. In the present paper I will try to explain why Kant adopted this conception. I will identify three core conditions which Kant thinks a proper science must satisfy: systematicity, objective grounding, and apodictic certainty. These conditions conform to conditions codified in the Classical Model of Science. Kant’s infamous claim that any proper natural science must be mathematical should be understood on the basis of these conditions. In order to substantiate (...) this reading, I will show that only in this way it can be explained why Kant thought (1) that mathematics has a particular foundational function with respect to the natural sciences and (2) as such secures their scientific status. (shrink)

I present an argument for an interpretation of Kant's views on the nature of the ‘content [Inhalt]’ of ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’. In contrast to one of the longest standing interpretations of Kant's views on cognitive content, which ascribes to Kant a straightforwardly psychologistic understanding of content, and in contrast as well to the more recently influential reading of Kant put forward by McDowell and others, according to which Kant embraces a version of Russellianism, I argue that Kant's views on this topic (...) are of a much more Fregean bent than has traditionally been admitted or appreciated. I conclude by providing a sketch of how a better grasp of Kant's views on cognitive content in general can help bring into sharper relief what is, and what is not, at stake in the recent debates over whether Kant accepts a particular kind of cognitive content—namely, non-conceptual content. (shrink)

A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality—in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts—as well as formulated a set of teleological criteria of adequacy for it. What is missing, to date, is an account of the mereological principles that govern (...) the envisioned whole-to-part causality. When the latter principles are taken into account, we find that there is no version of whole-to-part causality that is mereologically, causally and teleologically possible all at once, as teleological realism requires. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce and the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel . While Peirce engaged with Hegel’s thought quite extensively, his often critical comments on the latter have made it hard to see any genuine common ground between the two; recent ways of reading Hegel, however, suggest how this might be possible, where the connections between their respective metaphysical positions and views of the categories are explored here. Issues relating to their (...) epistemology and philosophies of languages are considered in a companion article. (shrink)

According to the ‘One Object’ reading of Kant's transcendental idealism, the distinction between the appearance and the thing in itself is not a distinction between two objects, but between two ways of considering one and the same object. On the ‘Metaphysical’ version of the One Object reading, it is a distinction between two kinds of properties possessed by one and the same object. Consequently, the Metaphysical One Object view holds that a given appearance, an empirical object, is numerically identical to (...) the thing in itself that appears as that object. I raise various indiscernibility arguments against that view; because an appearance has different spatiotemporal and modal properties than a thing in itself, no appearance can be identical to a thing in itself. I point out that these arguments are similar to arguments against Monism, the view that material objects are numerically identical to the matter of which they are made. I outline some strategies Monists have developed to respond to these indiscernibility arguments and then develop parallel responses on behalf of the Metaphysical One Object view. However, I then raise another indiscernibility argument, to which, I argue, the Metaphysical One Object view cannot respond, even using the resources I have developed thus far. I develop a modified version of the Metaphysical One Object view that can respond to this new indiscernibility argument, but, I argue, this modified version of the One Object view is only a terminological variant of the Two Object view. When the Metaphysical One Object view is fully thought through it becomes the Two Object view. I conclude that Kantian appearances are not numerically identical to the things in themselves that appear to us. (shrink)

Abstract: Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (SZ) is commonly viewed as one of the 20th century's great anti-Cartesian works, usually because of its attack on the epistemology-driven dualism and mentalism of modern philosophy of mind or its apparent effort to ‘de-center the subject’ in order to privilege being or sociality over the individual. Most who stress one or other of these anti-Cartesian aspects of SZ, however, pay little attention to Heidegger's own direct engagement with Descartes, apart from the compressed discussion in (...) SZ§§19–21. I here show through a careful reading of Heidegger's lectures on Descartes from the years immediately preceding SZ that, while he has sharp criticisms of Descartes and certain ‘Cartesian’ aspects of modern philosophy along the lines commonly recognized, he also aims to disclose what he calls the ‘positive possibilities’ in Descartes and the philosophy he inspired. I detail a number of these and then show that they force us to see Heidegger's own early project as largely unconcerned with dualism and mentalism per se, and much more with questions of the philosophical methodology that gives rise to them. Moreover, I show that a careful reading of Heidegger's treatment of the cogito makes clear that he is no serious way attempting to ‘de-center the subject’ and that the fundamental question of the ‘analytic of Dasein’ is one that takes Descartes as an immediate jumping off point: how can I articulate what I understand myself to be as the general kind of entity I am, and on what besides me does my being depend? (shrink)

Kant uses incongruent counterparts in his work before and after 1781, but not in the first Critique. Given the relevance that incongruent counterparts had for his thought on space, and their persistence in his work during the 1780s, it is plausible to think that he had a reason for leaving them out of both editions of the Critique. Two implausible conjectures for their absence are here considered and rejected. A more plausible alternative is put forth, which explains that textual absence (...) as a result of the synthetic method of presentation intended for the Critique. (shrink)

On the Protophysics of time. Reply to H. Andreas* critique along with a remark on the scope of operational foundations of measurement. In 2004, H. Andreas presented in this journal a refutation of Janich's operational foundation of time measurement. Pursuing suggestions made by F. Mühlhölzer in 1981, Andreas intends to show that Janich's proof of the uniqueness of the operationalization that he suggested fails. It is shown that Andreas' arguments, like Mühlhölzer's, are mistaken and do not challenge Janich's theory. Some (...) remarks on the scope of Protophysics are added, which may lead to a more substantial discussion of the merits of Janich's approach. (shrink)

Kant wants to show that freedom is possible in the face of natural necessity. Transcendental idealism is his solution, which locates freedom outside of nature. I accept that this makes freedom possible, but object that it precludes the recognition of other rational agents. In making this case, I trace some of the history of Kant’s thoughts on freedom. In several of his earlier works, he argues that we are aware of our own activity. He later abandons this approach, as he (...) worries that any awareness of our activity involves access to the noumenal, and thereby conflicts with the epistemic limits of transcendental idealism. In its place, from the second Critique onwards, Kant argues that we are conscious of the moral law, which tells me that I ought to do something, thus revealing that I can. This is the only proof of freedom consistent with transcendental idealism, but I argue that such an exclusively first-personal approach precludes the recognition of other rational agents. I conclu.. (shrink)

In this article, the notion of infinity is analyzed in the philosophy of Kant. This analysis is relevant and necessary for Kant, on this subject, makes statements that seems to be openly contradictory. By contrast, in this article is defend the idea that there is a clear and consistent notion of infinity, and this not only in the Critique of Pure Reason, but also in earlier and later works.

This article examines Kant’s discussion of the division between reason and unreason in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View . On the one hand, Kant says that there is a normative, clear, and definite division between reason and unreason. On the other hand, Kant offers three arguments showing that we cannot draw such a division. First, we cannot explain the normative grounds for the division. Second, both reason and unreason are present in everyone to varying degrees in different (...) ways. Third, Kant invalidates the division as such by characterizing what should be more incomprehensible than an extreme case of unreason as also being a rational way of life. (shrink)

Pain: the most senseless of things or the most vital of phenomena? This essay aims at a defense of the meaning of pain through an inquiry into the ek-static temporality that structures a being-in-pain. The argument considers the common understanding of pain as a symptom. As the present result of a source of injury that demands a cure, a being-in-pain pictures a movement from something to something else, that is, it pictures the ek-static structure discovered by Aristotle. Furthermore, the argument (...) recalls the Aristotelian apprehension of pain as responsible for the innermost secret of dynamics as such. Pain causes unease and demands change, and hence it opens up a future dimension that marks a beginning of motion and change in general, and of time in particular. When confronted with a pain bound to be chronic, when no change can be expected, time remains. The concluding reading of witness-literature, supports the guiding intuition of pain as a passion in service of things forgotten, in futural light of an eventually new beginning. (shrink)

Since Carol Gilligan's analysis of the “Heinz dilemma,” many philosophers working on care have articulated critiques of abstraction and principles in ethics. Their objections to abstraction and principles have not always been systematically set out. In this paper, I try to clarify the debate. I begin by distinguishing several aspects of the care critique. I then consider the strengths of each from a Kantian perspective. I conclude that, although some of these objections point out potential misuses of abstraction and principle, (...) and in doing so, suggest strategies and cautions for their correct and careful use in ethics, they do not present a successful challenge to abstraction or principles as such. (shrink)

While purely causal theories of reference have provided a plausible account of the meanings of names and natural kind terms, they cannot handle vacuous theoretical terms. The causal homeostasis theory can but incurs other difficulties. Theories of reference that are intensional and not purely causal tend to be molecularist or holist. Holist theories threaten transtheoretic reference, whereas molecularist theories must supply a principled basis for selecting privileged meaning-determining relations between terms. The causal homeostasis theory is a two-factor molecularist theory, but (...) it fails to provide such a principled basis and collapses into holism. A naturalistic, non-foundationalist holism that deploys strategies of intertheoretic reduction and co-evolutionary pluralism can, however, yield a credible version of transtheoretic reference. (shrink)

For Kant, the contents of cosmopolitan law are to be ‘limited’ to non-citizens' subjective rights to hospitality. Although hospitality yields universal and far-reaching communicative rights, its limits may seem overly restrictive at first. I argue that this narrow focus is intended to fend off justifications for colonial occupation that could otherwise draw support from Kant's own doctrine of private law. Kantian hospitality is further limited in that it does not cover all forms of communicative exchange. As can be shown from (...) his endorsement of China's and Japan's protectionist policies, Kant is not averse to limiting cosmopolitan citizens' commercial speech. In conclusion, I discuss rivalling interpretations of Kant's justification of hospitality. I argue that this justification cannot rest exclusively on the innate human right to freedom, but must draw on facts about the world as well. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, two philosophical positions that structure distinct approaches in the history of metaphysics and epistemology are briefly characterized and contrasted. While one view, “naturalism,” rejects an a priori commitment to necessity, the other view, “transcendentalism,” insists on that commitment. It is shown that at the level of the fundamentals of thought, judgment, and reason, the dispute dissolves, and the naturalists' employment of “necessity for all practical purposes” is at best only nominally distinct from the transcendentalists' use of (...) the same concept. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I consider the significant but generally overlooked role that the French Revolution played in the development of German Idealism. Specifically, I argue that Reinhold and Fichte's engagement in revolutionary political debates directly shaped their interpretation of Kant's philosophy, leading them (a) to overlook his reliance upon common sense, (b) to misconstrue his conception of the relationship between philosophical theory and received cognitive practice, (c) to fail to appreciate the fundamentally regressive nature of his transcendental argumentative strategy, (...) and, ultimately, (d) to seek to deduce his philosophy from a single first-principle, one grounded in the immediate awareness of the subject's mental life. (shrink)

En el prólogo a la segunda edición de la Crítica de la razón pura, ¿qué ha querido decir Kant con una “revolución del modo de pensar” que se debe aplicar a la meta-física para que tome el camino de la ciencia? Cabe distinguir dos significados: uno de carácter metodológico, que asume que el conocimiento rige a los objetos y ten-dría alcance. Aplicada a la metafísica, supone una transformación más profunda que permite hablar, en segundo lugar, de un significado metafísico específico, (...) que implica que el conocimiento constituye aquello mismo a lo que se llama el objeto de las representaciones. (shrink)

: Most contemporary attempts to draw inspiration from Kant's cosmopolitan project focus exclusively on the prescriptive recommendations he makes in his article, ‘On Perpetual Peace’. In this essay, I argue that there is more to his cosmopolitan point of view than his normative agenda. Kant has a unique and interesting way of problematizing the way individuals and peoples relate to one another on the stage of world history, based on a notion that human beings who share the earth in common (...) ‘originally’ constitute a ‘commercium’ of thoroughgoing interaction. By unpacking this concept of ‘commercium’, we can uncover in Kant a more critical perspective on world history that sets up the cosmopolitan as a specific kind of historical-political challenge. I will show that we can distinguish this level of problematization from the prescriptive level at which Kant formulates his familiar recommendations in ‘Perpetual Peace’. I will further show how his particular way of framing the cosmopolitan problematic can be expanded and expatiated upon to develop a more critical, reflexive, and open-ended conception of cosmopolitan thinking. (shrink)

I assess a series of arguments intended to show that 'ought' implies 'can'. Two are rooted in uses of 'ought' in contexts of deliberation and command. A third draws on the distinctive resources of deontic logic. I show that, in each case, the arguments leave scope for forms of infinite moral consciousness—forms of moral consciousness in which a moral obligation retains its authority even in the face of the conviction that the obligation is impossible to fulfil. In this respect the (...) paper sides with Martin Luther against Erasmus and Kant. (shrink)

Se examina la diferencia en el estatuto moral de los seres humanos y de los demás animales, en la filosofía práctica de Kant, así como las consecuencias de esta distin-ción para el debate en torno al conceptualismo, centrando la atención en dos líneas que parecen correr paralelas: una considera que los animales no humanos tienen el valor relativo de cosas, mientras que la otra sostiene que los animales no humanos o humanos no racionales pueden tener acceso no conceptual a contenidos (...) representacio-nales de carácter objetivo. Se analizan las implicaciones prácticas de la imposibilidad del no conceptualismo, y se muestra cómo rechaza un no conceptualismo fuerte que les atribuye a estos seres un acceso a representaciones objetivas que justifiquen, por medios protorracionales, creencias prácticas o epistémicas. (shrink)

In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) presents the concept of order in terms of a notational iteration that is completely logical but not part of logic. Logic for him is not the foundation of mathematical concepts but rather a purely formal way of reflecting the world that at the minimum adds absolutely no content. Order for him is not based on the concepts of logic but is instead revealed through an ideal notational series. He states that logic is “transcendental”. (...) As such it requires an ideal that his philosophical method eventually forces him to reject. I argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophy is more dialectical than transcendental. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that attention to Kant's philosophy of mathematics sheds light on the doctrine that there are two stems of the cognitive capacity, which are distinct, but equally necessary for cognition. Specifically, I argue for the following four claims: The distinctive structure of outer sensible intuitions must be understood in terms of the concept of magnitude. The act of sensibly representing a magnitude involves a special act of spontaneity Kant ascribes to a capacity he (...) calls the productive imagination. Contrary to what is assumed by many commentators, it is not the case that the Two Stems Doctrine implies that a representation is either sensible or spontaneity-dependent, but not both. Outer sensible intuitions are both sensible and spontaneity-dependent – they are sensible because they exhibit the kind of structure Kant takes to be distinctive of outer sensible intuitions, and they depend on spontaneity because they are cases of sensibly representing a magnitude. (shrink)

Gödel's philosophical views were to a significant extent influenced by the study not only of Leibniz or Husserl, but also of Kant. Both Gödel and Kant aimed at the secure foundation of philosophy, the certainty of knowledge and the solvability of all meaningful problems in philosophy. In this paper, parallelisms between the foundational crisis of metaphysics in Kant's view and the foundational crisis of mathematics in Gödel's view are elaborated, especially regarding the problem of finding the “secure path of a (...) science” for both mathematics and philosophy. Gödel's temporal subjectivism and metaphysical conceptual objectivism are presented as positively or negatively motivated by Kant's viewpoints. A remark on Gödel's collapse of modalities (in accordance with the collapse of objective time) is added. (shrink)