"One of the greatest problems of education," Kant observes, "is how to unite submission to the necessary restraint with the child's capability of exercising his free will." The famous philosopher explores potential solutions to this dilemma, stressing the necessity of treating children as children and not as miniature adults. Rather than a systematic study of theories, this succinct treatise encompasses Kant's thoughts on the subject of education. His positive outlook includes a conviction that human nature can be continually improved. (...) To achieve this end, he advocates raising the science of education to academic status-an innovative notion for the 18th century, and a landmark in modern Western education theory. Annette Churton translation. (shrink)

In the following essay, I attempt to reactualize some of Kant’s most fundamental conceptions of a state’s sovereignty and the legitimacy of the cosmopolitan order. To this end, I provide what appears as a viable solution to Kant’s “sovereignty dilemma”; that is, the reconciliation between state sovereignty and the international enforceability of laws. I consider that a key component of the overall Kantian cosmopolitan project is the role played by the transcendental notion of an (...) “originally united will” in its validation of constituencies. I emphasize the view that for Kant state-citizens are also, as he says, “citizens of the world” or “citizens of the earth”. I argue, furthermore, that a state’s sovereignty must comply with a number of different constitutional wholes. I then proceed by confronting the Kantian notion of a general united will with the Habermasian conception of “double sovereignty.” I conclude by suggesting a fusion/synthesis between the two views, one which would require endorsing the idea of cosmopolitan constitutionalism as a meta-framework for interpreting the legitimacy of member states’ compliance with policy indications of transnational constituencies. (shrink)

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is (...) required for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014). (shrink)

In recent years, Kant’s lesser-known works on anthropology, education, and history have received increasing scholarly attention, illuminating his views on human nature, moral psychology, and historical development. This paper contributes to this literature by exploring Kant's conceptualization of culture. While recent commentary has drawn on Kant's “impure ethics” to suggest that his anti-imperialism and cosmopolitanism reflect a concern for the preservation of different cultures, I argue that this misinterprets the nature and function of culture in Kant’s thought. Rather (...) than regarding culture as a constitutive good, I argue that Kant understands culture as a transitory good, as a sphere of individual and collective cultivation drawing humanity towards its teleologically given end: the perfection of our rational capacities. This suggests that only certain kinds of culture--those that “prepare [humanity] for a sovereignty in which reason alone is to dominate”--are valuable for Kant. Given this, I argue that Kant’s view of culture in fact presents far greater problems than prospects for theorizing an anti-imperial and cosmopolitan politics. (shrink)

Introducing articles on Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, various interpretative questions are discussed. Externally, alleged senility is contrasted with political maturity, just as irony and rhetorics are discussed in relation to (self-)censorship and the French Revolution. Internally, Kant scholars have discussed, e.g. the use of ‘eternal’ vs. ‘perpetual’, the question of preventive war, and, more in general, the relation between Kant’s political writings. In relation to the three definitive articles on state law, law of people and world citizen law, (...) issues are, e.g., Kant’s conception of constitution, democracy and their relation to peace, peace federation vs. world republic, thesis vs. hypothesis, and various ideas of sovereignty, as well as cosmopolitanism vs. world citizen right. Finally, questions concerning morality vs. politics and concerning transcendental publicity are presented. (shrink)

Bioethics introduces students to the most relevant historical, epistemological, methodological, and practical aspects of bioethics. The book presents readers with some of the most thought-provoking writing in the field, along with an original introduction to each reading. Selections range from the work of great philosophers like Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, to contemporary writings and reports. Readers explore various ideologies and philosophies including the seminal work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress on principles of biomedical ethics and the (...) dialogical approach to bioethics. They also consider controversial topics straight from the headlines of the day, such as the collision between paternalism and autonomy, futility, human research, genetic manipulation, and active and passive euthanasia. Bioethics encourages students to think objectively and impartially in order to resolve the ethical dilemmas that stem from biotechnological empowerment and biomedical techniques. The book is suitable for courses in biomedical, research, and practical ethics, as well as those that discuss moral philosophy. It can be used as a stand-alone text, or as a supplement to standard textbooks. Erick Valdes earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chile as well as a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne University in France. He is an adjunct research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, where he conducts advanced research on bioethics and biolaw. In addition, Dr. Valdes teaches bioethics, research ethics, theories of democracy and international human rights at George Mason University and American University. He is the author of nine books on bioethics and political philosophy and has published in both English and Spanish. He has written extensively on bioethics and biolaw for international journals, and served as a visiting professor at universities in England, France, Spain, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile. (shrink)

This study looks at the relationship between the two thinkers and demonstrates the viable alternative to Hobbes' orthodoxy that can be found in Kant's political writings. It also shows how Kant anticipated the development of a world-wide political order.

Are our actions morally good because we approve of them or are they good independently of our approval? Are we projecting moral values onto the world or do we detect values that are already there? For many these questions don’t state a real alternative but a secular variant of the Euthyphro dilemma: If our actions are good because we approve of them moral goodness appears to be arbitrary. If they are good independently of our approval, it is unclear how (...) we come to know their moral quality and how moral knowledge can be motivating. None of these options seems attractive; the source of moral goodness unclear. Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives. (shrink)

Dive into the moral philosophy at the heart of all four seasons of NBC’s The Good Place, guided by academic experts including the show’s philosophical consultants Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and featuring a foreword from creator and showrunner Michael Schur Explicitly dedicated to the philosophical concepts, questions, and fundamental ethical dilemmas at the heart of the thoughtful and ambitious NBC sitcom The Good Place Navigates the murky waters of moral philosophy in more conceptual depth to call into question what (...) Chidi’s ethics lessons—and the show—get right about learning to be a good person Features contributions from The Good Place’s philosophical consultants, Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and introduced by the show’s creator and showrunner Michael Schur Engages classic philosophical questions, including the clash between utilitarianism and deontological ethics in the “Trolley Problem,” Kant’s categorical imperative, Sartre’s nihilism, and T.M Scanlon's contractualism Explores themes such as death, love, moral heroism, free will, responsibility, artificial intelligence, fatalism, skepticism, virtue ethics, perception, and the nature of autonomy in the surreal heaven-like afterlife of the Good Place Led by Kimberly S. Engels, co-editor of Westworld and Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James S. Mullican DETERMINISM, FATALISM, AND FREE WILL IN HAWTHORNE A recurrent theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing is the relationship between fatalism and free will. His tales, romances, and notebooks contain explicit and implied references to man's freedom of choice and his consequent responsibility for his acts, as well as to "fatalities" that impel men to various courses of action. Much of the ambiguity in Hawthorne's fiction rests on (...) this conflict between the notions of human freedom and responsibility on one hand and fatalism on the other. Although there is no question that this theme was important for Hawthorne, there is much disagreement concerning what Hawthorne himself believed. Critics have taken virtually every position on the spectrum between the poles of complete freedom and complete fatalism. That this disagreement exists should not be surprising. Hawthorne was an artist, not a philosopher or theologian; an important element of his technique, perhaps essential to his vision of life, was his ambiguity. His dual vision of the world, of matter and spirit, of evil and good, and his emphasis now of one, now of the other, engender disagreement concerning his view of life. His alternate fascination with and apparent rejection of Puritanism have led some to believe he was a predestinarían, others to hold that he was a "libertarian," and at least one critic to write that Hawthorne believed in a "modified predestination." Turner argued that Hawthorne's attitude toward reform led him to fatalistic thinking. Since reform movements touched only the surface manifestations of vice, such movements were useless, in Hawthorne's view. The logical conclusion of such a position, reasoned Turner, was fatalism. "Hence reform which would stir only the superficial outcroppings and would leave untouched the real causes underneath would be futile at best. And since the true sources of evil, so Hawthorne thought, lie largely beyond the reach of human efforts, fatalism was the certain end of his thinking." Turner saw evidence for fatalism 91 92Philosophy and Literature in Hawthorne's fiction also: "... there is a clear suggestion that the decisions [by Hester, Dimmesdale, Rappaccini, Ethan Brand, and Hollingsworth] have been inevitable, that the agent responsible is fate rather than Hawthorne's character." This critic concluded that Hawthorne was convinced that "the universe, including man and man's soul, is governed by inexorable law." Some critics have linked Hawthorne's beliefs regarding free will and fatalism to his attitude toward Calvinism. Schneider wrote, "... Hawthorne translated into empirical truths the essential doctrines of Calvinism.... From the popular doctrine of reform, he returned to the Puritan doctrine of divine sovereignty." Schneider suggested that Hawthorne purified the doctrines of the Puritans and returned them to their original purpose, salvation of the soul. "He recovered what Puritans professed but seldom practiced—the spirit of piety, humility, and tragedy in the face of the inscrutable ways of God." Cowley wrote that Hawthorne "believed in predestination, as the Calvinists did." Mills was of the opinion that Hawthorne was the most sympathetic to the Puritans of the writers of his day, but that Calvinist dogma was moderated and softened in Hawthorne: "He did not accept completely the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, nor did he emphasize the supreme sovereignty of God which was the driving force of Calvinism." Other critics have granted some measure of freedom to Hawthorne's characters. Arvin wrote, "... freedom of choice exists, but on so narrow a basis that, once exercised in the wrong direction, it is forever resigned." Fairbanks held that Hawthorne reserved to man the initial moral choice which set up the chain of necessity, and from that notion Fairbanks drew the conclusion that, "Though often called a fatalist, Hawthorne believed in free will." Schwartz, in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, argued from Hawthorne's life and from his writings that he rejected fatalism in favor of free will. Wagenknecht noted that Hawthorne refused "to accept foreordination and total depravity." Still other critics have emphasized a paradoxical element in Hawthorne 's writing, his acceptance of both horns of the dilemma. Waggoner wrote: "He saw man as immersed in a mystery in which responsibility is at odds with fate. His own natural tendency was to emphasize causation at the... (shrink)

I clarify Kant's classification of duties and criticize the apocryphal tradition that, according to Kant, perfect duties trump imperfect duties. I then use Kant's view to argue that judges who believe that an action is immoral and should be illegal need not set aside their beliefs in order to comply with binding precedents that permit the action. The same view of morality that causes some people to oppose certain actions, including abortion, requires lower–court judges to comply with binding precedents. Therefore, (...) someone's opposition to legal abortion, by itself, does not justify opposing that person's nomination to a lower court. (shrink)

The book contends that contrary to accepted interpretation, moral intuition, rather than any other form of reasoning, least of all formal logic, is the moral method found in the ethics of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant and Dewey - the first four chapters of the book. These four thinkers represent a dialectical selection of ethical relativism and absolutism as well as a chronological succession from ancient to contemporary thought. The fifth and concluding chapter is a major presentation of the author's thesis on (...) moral intuition as the exact antidote against the dilemma ethics approach, which is widely used today with rapidly diminishing effect and interest. This chapter is a detailed illustration of how moral intuition works out concretely in the lived world. It stresses the unity of moral experience even as this is clouded over by our relatively fewer, but overdramatized, confrontations on some moral issues. (shrink)

This paper poses a dilemma for applying the category of substance given Kant's different conceptions of substance in the Critique of Pure Reason. Briefly stated, if the category of substance applies to an omnipresent and sempiternal substance, then although this would ensure that all experiences of empirical objects take place in a common spatiotemporal framework, one could not individuate these empirical objects and experience their alterations. If the category of substance applies to ordinary empirical objects, however, then although one (...) could individuate these substances and experience their alterations, the category would not pick out a common spatiotemporal framework for these experiences. I will argue that this dilemma can be overcome by examining the development of Kant's conception of substance in his final work, the Opus postumum. (shrink)

Both neokantian moral theorists and Kant scholars have begun to incorporate Kant's moral anthropology. The result has been kantian moral theory that pays attention to character, virtue, and the richness of human life, and that takes seriously Kant's own conception of the importance for ethics of moral anthropology. But there is an apparent conflict between Kant's anthropological insights into empirical helps and hindrances to developing moral character and his insistence that transcendental freedom is a condition of the possibility of moral (...) responsibility. ;This problem was originally raised in Schleiermacher's review of Kant's published Anthropology, and hence I call it "Schleiermacher's dilemma." As Schleiermacher points out, Kant's account of freedom implies a fundamental priority of freedom. Free choices can be ultimate grounds of events in the world, but one cannot similarly consider events in the world ultimate grounds of choice. At the same time, Kant's anthropology is both empirical and morally significant. His anthropological accounts of politeness, emotions, and character are all accounts of empirical influences that help or hinder having a good will. ;Contemporary kantian moral theorists have not sufficiently addressed this tension. Some offer promising possibilities for moral anthropology, but either fail to recognize the full moral significance of empirical influences or sacrifice Kant's theory of freedom. My dissertation fills this gap. I reconcile Kant's moral anthropology to his theory of freedom by clearly articulating Kant's notion of a free will "in revolution" against evil. By making clear the relationship between this will and its appearance in the world, an appearance that takes the form of a struggle against evil, I argue that promoting empirical aids to moral "progress" expresses a good will. This preserves the priority of freedom over empirical influences without undermining the moral significance of those influences. I show how this "expression" model of moral anthropology applies to cases of interpersonal moral influence, and I show how far Kant can allow for such influence. Finally, I compare Kant's ethics with Schleiermacher's soft determinist moral theory to show both the limitations and the strengths of Kant's conception of moral anthropology. (shrink)

This paper aims at explaining Kant’s concept of sovereignty as defined in the Doctrine of Right as well at showing its relation to the idea of republicanization and of political progress. Since Kant emphatically claims that sovereignty belongs solely to the united will of the people but, at the same time, does not want the people to intervene directly in the process of decision making, we shall distinguish between the real and the actual sovereign , as well (...) between a synchronic and a diachronic concept both of the “united will” and of “the people”. By doing this, it will become clear in what sense Kant claims that every republic is necessarily a representative political system. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of moral conflict in Kant’s ethics. An analysis of the only explicit discussion of the topic in his published writings confirms that there is no room for genuine moral dilemmas. Conflict is limited to nonconclusive ‘grounds’ of obligation. They arise only in the sphere of ethical duty and, though defeasible, ought to be construed as the result of valid arguments an agent correctly judges to apply in the situation at hand. While it is difficult (...) to determine in theory what makes some of them stronger than others, these ‘grounds’ can account for practical residue in conflict cases and for a plausible form of agent regret. The principle that ‘ought implies can’ survives intact. (shrink)

Kantian legalism is now the dominant scholarly interpretation of Kant and an important approach to legal and political philosophy in its own right. One notable feature is its construal of the relationship between law and politics decisively in law’s favour: Law subordinates politics. Political judgment is constrained by and only permissibly exercised through law. This paper opposes this subordination through a close analysis of an ambiguity in Kant’s conception of sovereignty. Understanding this ambiguity requires seeing that, for Kant, (...) law cannot subordinate the sovereign’s political judgment because it is a condition which makes a legal system possible. Kant was not an exacting legalist, but a practical reasoner struggling with the pressures politics imposes on finite beings. Through discussion of a leading contemporary approach, and close engagement with its historical source, the paper raises new considerations about the relevance of political judgment in the relationship of law and politics. (shrink)

In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kant's principle that ought implies can, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kant's ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the principle is incompatible (...) with disjunctive obligation in standard deontic logic, and that it entails paradoxically that none of the conflicting dilemma actions will in fact occur. The principle appears to provide the only plausible safeguard against deontic antinomy, but cannot be admitted because of its collision with considered moral judgments. (shrink)

Kant realizes the principle of autonomy of the will as the sublime principle of morality. To him, if the principles we will are constituted by a being which poses universal laws, our "will or want" also acts autonomously and independently. Accordingly, moral laws are not only posed by humankind herself but she obliges herself to act according to the laws she herself has posed. Therefore, Kant takes autonomy into meticulous consideration in the realm of action and agency. With this in (...) mind, the current article analyzes this principle on the basis of three extant interpretations of autonomy that is individual, moral, and political autonomies; it elucidates these three kinds of autonomy while referring to their propinquity with Kant's. Ultimately, it comes in conclusion that whereas they have been grounded in different contexts, they do not mainly differ from Kant's autonomy of the will because of their commonality in the two meanings of "being free from dependence" and "capability to pose laws". For Kant, the autonomy of the will can be treated as some kind of moral autonomy: one must be bound/subjected to duties of morality in order to apply or act according merely to one's individual autonomy thereby the political sovereignty can also achieves its entire autonomy. (shrink)

Interpreters of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism face a dilemma: it seems to either beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic or else offer a disappointingly Berkeleyan conclusion. In this article I offer an interpretation of the Refutation on which it does not beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic. After defending a principle about question-begging, I identify four premises concerning our representations that there are textual reasons to think Kant might be implicitly assuming. Using those assumptions, I offer (...) a reconstruction of Kant’s Refutation that avoids the interpretative dilemma, though difficult questions about the argument remain. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s mature political philosophy entails the provisionality thesis. The provisionality thesis asserts that in a world like ours, populated with beings sufficiently like us, acquired rights (rights to external objects of choice, including property, sovereignty and territory) are necessarily provisional. I motivate the standard view, which restricts the notion of provisional right to the state of nature and the transition from the state of nature to the civil condition. I then provide two textual arguments against (...) it. I conclude by reflecting on the normative implications of the provisionality thesis, arguing that they are more modest than has been formerly appreciated. (shrink)

This is Werner S. Pluhar's translation of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft) for Hackett Publications (Indianapolis, Indiana). ISBN 9780872200258 (paperback).

I interpret Kant's distinction between free and dependent beauty in a way that makes it possible for an object to be judged dependently beautiful without being judged freely beautiful. This is an alternative to the analyses provided by Malcolm Budd and Christopher Janaway, which both face a dilemma because they entail that an object must be judged freely beautiful in order to be judged dependently beautiful. The dilemma is that either the determinant of a judgement of dependent beauty (...) is based upon non-aesthetic criteria (if the object is not freely beautiful), or else the judgement is superfluous for an account of aesthetic value. My analysis of the distinction allows both kinds of beauty to play a meaningful role in a theory of aesthetic value. (shrink)

The paper argues that the issue of the Third Antinomy of Reason (the conflict between the ideas of natural and free causality) remained a central concern throughout all of Kant's ethical writings subsequent to the first Critique. In the Grundlegung, the second and third Critiques and, finally, in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft we find Kant continually refining and modifying the concept of a transcendental freedom but never arriving at a satisfactory resolution. I argue that any such (...) resolution (such as that attempted by Professor Silber through an analysis of Kant's explication of Wille and Willkur) would not only imply the overturning of Kant's ethical philosophy but the entire Kantian system insofar as it stands astride the twin pillars of phenomenal and noumenal reality. (shrink)

Preface The status of sovereignty as a highly ambiguous concept is well established. Pointing out or deploring, the ambiguity of the idea has itself become a recurring motif in the literature on sovereignty. As the legal theorist and international lawyer Alf Ross put it, “there is hardly any domain in which the obscurity and confusion is as great as here.” 1 The concept of sovereignty is often seen as a downright obstacle to fruitful conceptual analysis, carried over (...) from its proper setting in history to “plague and befog contemporary thought.” 2 . . . So contested is the concept that, rather than pursuing the contestation, many political theorists think we should give up so protean a notion. Granting that the debate on the relevance of sovereignty frustratingly oscillates between claims that it will either continue to exist or that it is about to disappear, forgetting it altogether, and thereby escaping this seemingly endless argument, can easily appear as the most urgent task for political theory . The following argument makes a case that the “urgent task” is not the abandonment of the concept of sovereignty, but an understanding of its essential philosophical nature as an integrated and evolving expression of practical reason. Sovereignty is neither ambiguous nor obscure once its fundamental presuppositions are laid bare and its many philosophical and historical manifestations shown to be the product, in actuality, of a single, dialectally dynamic but integrated set of metaphysical elements. This is the first of three arguments describing the evolution of international law as a manifestation of practical reason through an application of philosophical method to the source , locus , and scope of the concept of sovereignty. It moves from a dialectic balance favoring utility to a balance dominated by legal right to a dialectic of duty to humanity and nature. All three arguments are meant to be a contribution to the new field of International Legal Philosophy as defined by Phillip Allott. 4 This field combines a sensitivity to legal practice with an effort to understand the underlying philosophical determinants of empirical choice and behavior. One purpose of international legal philosophy is to “remove” from the minds of those who study the law what Diderot defined as “the sophism of the ephemeral,” and what Allott calls “the disempowering idea that what xii Preface happens to exist now is inevitable and permanent.” 5 A core imperative is to “reunderstand what it is to be a thinking being” 6 and to rediscover the dialectic between the private and the public as it determines, and is redetermined by, legal practice. This requires a “revolution in the human mind” 7 so that we may transcend the current dependence on positivist methods and empirical fact as an end-in-itself, and try to understand the underlying and more constant and essential ideas and inherent dialectics that constitute the substructure or “metaphysics” of international law. I will approach this “revolution” with the use of R. G. Collingwood’s philosophical method 8 and the philosophy of David Hume, applied to international law as an expression of practical reason. The goal of philosophical method is the construction of a comprehensive policy argument (CPA) for a public policy or legal issue. In addition to the conventional use of empirical models and their logic of investigation in the study of policy and law, CPA requires that an underlying philosophical logic of concepts be deciphered to identify the ideas within the issue, and their definition, overlap, and systematic interdependence. Philosophical method is a means with which to interpret and understand competing systematic and complete conceptual logics, existing at the core of an issue and pertinent to policy change. Philosophical method is therefore not meant to be a replacement for the empirical investigation of a policy or legal issue, or the use of scientific method in social studies. Rather, it is a complimentary and prerequisite method that seeks to transcend the limitations of positivism and present a more complete understanding of the philosophical presuppositions of positivist ideas like power, interest, or strategic rationality. Philosophical method is meant to be used with the facts of the policy or legal issue to match an illuminating logic of concepts with a pertinent logic of investigation . Within the CPA, the use of philosophical method and the metaphysics of a policy or legal issue is assumed to be critical to the full understanding of the overlapping concepts, dialectics, and scale of forms that determine, and are determined by, the empirical context of the policy or legal topic. Specifically, instead of utilizing bits and pieces of various theoretical arguments to address narrowly focused empirical questions, as positivism prescribes, I will address the evolution of international law as practical reason in three phases. Each will be approached through a single integrated logic of philosophical concepts from a particular philosopher (i.e., David Hume, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant). This philosophically holistic approach to the law is based on the assumption that only through the use of a single integrated argument in legal analysis can sovereignty, or any concept, be understood as a truly systematic and logical whole. A complete philosophical paradigm has a dialectic integrity and systematic logic that can more adequately describe the evolving essence of a concept like sovereignty. This approach also has the advantage of generating a number of distinct holistic descriptions of the law through the application of different philosophical systems, one at a time, to its factual structure. 9 Positivism does not seek Preface xiii holism, and rejects the idea that “theory” has such a characteristic. The essential or comprehensive substructure of any idea is therefore ignored in a method that recommends the observation of empirical problems through the use of whatever hodgepodge of theoretical elements is seen fit to frame its superstructure. This failure to deal with metaphysics has retarded both an essential understanding of international law as a species of legal system, and any holistic and dialectical conceptualization of its inherent concepts, like sovereignty. A second positivist convention expects modern theorists to create new theory rather than to refine and apply that of existing philosophy. This predisposition is driven by the positivist goal of discovery that ignores refinement as a possible purpose of philosophical analysis. Collingwood argues that philosophy must take that set of ideas already known and utilize existing systematic philosophical arguments to refine them so that they evolve closer to their essence as concepts. Considering this imperative, the idea of sovereignty can be assumed to have had valid usage for hundreds of years, over which time, the concept has evolved to mean different things, each a refinement of the definition that preceded it. Transcending positivism means that the scholar’s search is not for “new” material, but to decipher the metaphysical essence of a concept as it has been made manifest over time and context. These manifestations are rooted, and refined from, the known terms of that concept’s inherent idea(s). Rather than depending exclusively on positivism and its conventions, my work utilizes, in addition to Collingwood, the intact philosophical systems of Hume, Hegel, and Kant to trace the refinement of international law as a product of human practical reason. These paradigms, or integrated systems of logical concepts, will be applied to legal practice individually, so that each CPA can be deciphered separately. This provides a set of integrated and logically intact paradigms for the evolutionary stages of practical reason in international law. Because each argument is applied systematically, a deeper understanding of the source, locus, and scope in the development of law in general, and international law in particular, is possible where it is not with the application of various disconnected components of many theories. Each CPA based on Hume, Hegel, or Kant can then be used to describe a distinct context that its logic of concepts best illuminates; specifically, the (1) genesis, (2) contemporary dilemmas, and (3) future of the international legal system. By widening the perspective of international lawyers and policymakers, they can more easily perceive the dialectic of ideas that has created, and is refined by, the legal practice in which they participate. We also move toward Allott’s goal of “human self-perfecting.” 10 And, in addition, by providing a more complete knowledge of the origins of legal practice and its evolution, we illuminate the practical possibilities for what we might “choose to be” 11 in the future. To achieve this, the essential metaphysical elements of state sovereignty and its inherent evolutionary scale of forms will be deciphered and described. This will transform what appears to be a multitude of definitions and xiv Preface practical realizations of the concept of sovereignty into a set of interdependent manifestations of a single substructure, made of a single set of dialectic elements. The interpretation of international law through practical reason sorts and integrates a diverse and discordant literature and defines state sovereignty as a single concept evolving on a scale of forms that allows it to exhibit diverse character traits, all arising from different combinations of common and essential metaphysical elements. This approach, compared to positivist methods and legal realism, allows one to transcend current agreement that sovereignty is, at best, a narrowly focused set of empirical characteristics or, at worst, “organized hypocrisy.” 12 This method also encourages the scholar and practitioner to understand the predispositions and pitfalls of the concept of sovereignty, as well as its potential future paths, more effectively. The use of philosophical method to create policy paradigms out of preexisting philosophical systems and apply these to international law will be called Philosophical-Policy & Legal Design . This approach allows the use of preexisting and complete philosophical arguments that provide an adequate logic of concepts to chart the evolution of the idea of sovereignty along its scale of forms. An examination of the source of practical reason in human social convention with the employment of a philosophical-policy drawn from Hume’s logic of concepts about human nature will demonstrate this new approach. Why Hume? Because, up to now, without an adequate substructure we have arguments, like Brunne é’ s and Troope’s, 13 that may correctly identify international law as an “interactional” system, but cannot present any argument as to why it is, where this empirical reality comes from, or what its implications are for the future. Comparatively, Hume provides a logic of philosophical concepts that answers these concerns. First, he fulfills the requirements for a fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of law from social convention and the dependence of social convention on the human imperative for society. Second, he offers a more adequate delineation of the overlapping concepts of the law in terms of the ideas and institutions that deal with norms and justice (e.g., principle, process, practice, rule, power, interest). Third, he provides a fundamental understanding of the essential dialectics at the core of a conceptualization of the law with both unconscious and conscious human participation (i.e., passion. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the Peircean interpretation of Kant's doctrine on the syntheticity of mathematics. Peirce correctly locates Kant's distinction in two different sources: Kant's lack of access to polyadic logic and, more interestingly, Kant's insight into the role of ingenious experiments required in theorem-proving. In this second respect, Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction is identical with the distinction Peirce discovered among types of mathematical reasoning. I contrast this Peircean theory with two other prominent views on Kant's syntheticity, i.e. the Russellian and the (...) Beckian views, and show how Peirce's interpretation of Kant solves the dilemma that each of these two views faces. I also show that Hintikka's criterion for Kant's synthetic judgments, i.e. a new individual introduced by the -instantiation rule, does not capture the most important characteristic of Peirce's theorematic reasoning, i.e. the process of choosing a correct individual. (shrink)

A translation of Kant's early paper, ‘Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physikalisch erwogen’ is presented, and the main features of his position on this question in 1754 are summarized. In that year, Kant believed that the Earth was ageing, and that it was about 6000 years old. The paper allows us to understand the approximate outline of Kant's general ‘theory of the Earth’, and the relation of this theory to the cosmogony that he propounded in 1755. His ideas on (...) the processes of erosion, and the formation of rivers, deltas and sandbanks, are noteworthy, and provide a contribution to the eighteenth-century literature on the denudation dilemma. Kant's general theory of erosion and deposition was, it seems, based to a significant extent on his knowledge of the geographical features of the Königsberg district. The general teleological position underpinning his philosophy may be discerned in this early paper, and he may be thought of as having been trying to orientate himself in space and time, so to speak, before undertaking his major reconstructions in philosophy. (shrink)

Kant bequeaths to the present discourse of cosmopolitanism the question of how a constitutionalized global order without a world state is possible. At the core of the matter is what a legitimate public authority as the necessary enactor of the cosmopolitan sovereignty is. Habermas’s answer that this is a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority is a plausible one. The key to Habermas’s answer is the concept of a political constitution for a pluralist world. If such a constitution is (...) possible, I believe that we need a new concept of constitution as a body politic of norms, statute laws, common laws, legal precedents, and international treaties; on this point, we should take the UK constitution as the paradigm and recognize that since the end of World War II, such a body politic of norms, statute laws, common laws, legal precedents, and international treaties of the global human community has been emerging. (shrink)

This paper characterises concisely a key issue about rational justification which highlights an important achievement of Kant’s constructivist method for identifying and justifying basic norms: uniquely, it resolves the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. Kant’s constructivist method is both sound and significant because it is based on core principles of rational justification as such. Explicating this basis of Kant’s constructivism affords an illuminating and defensible explication of four key aspects of the autonomy of rational judgment, including (...) our positive moral freedom; it shows how Kant’s constructivism is fundamentally social and it shows how Kant’s constructivism can readily accommodate historical factors which bear on the appropriateness and legitimacy of social and political institutions. All of these advantages are available without recourse to Kant’s transcendental idealism, and all of them respond to common complaints about or alleged objections to Kant’s practical philosophy. (shrink)

Could each and every one of us, instead of interacting with actual objects, really be brains in a vat? In the first chapter of his new book, Reason, Truth and History, Professor Putnam raises this and related questions with the aim of undermining what he calls the “metaphysical realist” or “externalist” conception of reality. Putnam describes metaphysical realism as a view which holds that the world consists in “some fixed totality of mind-independent objects”; truth on this view amounts to a (...) correspondence between words or thoughts and these objects. Putnam contrasts metaphysical realism with a doctrine which he names “internalism” and calls on Kant to explicate its basic ideas. Putnam claims that Kant was the first philosopher to see clearly the difficulties inherent in metaphysical realism. The doctrine of transcendental idealism, says Putnam, represents Kant’s attempt to avoid externalism. But is Kant’s doctrine really just an early version of Putnam’s internalism? In this paper I shall argue that it is not. Although Kant obviously rejects the position Putnam calls “externalism,” I shall try to show that Kant’s metaphysical theory is distinct from internalism. Kant couples transcendental idealism with a second doctrine of empirical realism, and this enables Kant to circumvent both the internalist’s coherence theory of truth as well as a simple-minded correspondence theory. To be sure, one of Kant’s major concerns is to argue against the possibility of knowing things-in-themselves; Kant thus maintains, as Putnam correctly points out, that the nature of perceivers must figure in the nature of what is perceived. But this is not to say, as Putnam implies, that there is no mind-independent reality in Kant’s theory. On the contrary, Kant’s Refutation of Idealism—an argument that strikingly resembles the first horn of Putnam’s brain-in-a-vat dilemma—is designed to establish the existence of “matter,” which is Kant’s general term for what we might call the “external” or the “mind-independent.” Kant does argue that the perception of matter must accord with space and time, the two forms of sensibility, and this is the source of his transcendental idealism. But if we take this to mean that there cannot be anything independent of our minds or of our conceptual schemes, then we miss the point of Kant’s double doctrine of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, which is intended to avoid a coherence-only theory of truth while yet affirming that objects are knowable only as appearances. Putnam, by running together a number of Kantian notions, misrepresents Kant’s position and thus fails to see that Kant does offer an alternative to both metaphysical realism and internalism. I shall begin my defense of the claim that Kant does provide a third alternative by exploring more fully the debate between Putnam and the externalist concerning the BV dilemma. I shall then explore the Refutation of Idealism to support my claim that Putnam’s internalism is distinct from transcendental idealism. We shall see in section IV that in interpreting Kant on transcendental idealism Putnam makes two crucial mistakes which lead him to equate internalism with transcendental idealism. The result of these mistakes is discussed in section V. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to analyse the influence of Johann Bernhard Basedow and Rousseau on Kant’s cosmopolitanism and concept of cosmopolitan education. It argues that both Basedow and Kant defined cosmopolitan education as non-denominational moral formation or Bildung, encompassing—in different forms—a thin version of moral religion following the core tenets of Christianity. Kant’s encounter with Basedow and the Philanthropinum in Dessau helps to understand the development of Kant’s concept of cosmopolitanism and educational theory ‘in weltbürgerlicher (...) Absicht’. Rousseau’s role is more complex: he clearly influenced Kant; he is usually considered a precursor of modern nationalism and national education; and recent studies have stressed the cosmopolitan dimension of his educational programme. I claim that the dilemma of education according to Rousseau is that one has to choose between education of homme or education of citoyen, and that there is no way to avoid or go beyond this stark alternative. Kant’s reinterpretation of Rousseau is favourable and creative and has found many followers up to the present, but is misleading, as he ignores the dilemma and imposes his own conception of cosmopolitanism, of cosmopolitan education and of (possible) progress in history on Rousseau while claiming that this was actually Rousseau’s message. (shrink)

How Tocqueville’s ideas can help us build resilient liberal democracies in a divided world How can today’s liberal democracies withstand the illiberal wave sweeping the globe? What can revive our waning faith in constitutional democracy? Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, one of democracy’s greatest champions and most incisive critics, can guide us forward. Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and lesser-known policy writings, Ewa Atanassow shines a bright light on the foundations of liberal democracy. She argues that (...) its prospects depend on how we tackle three dilemmas that were as urgent in Tocqueville’s day as they are in ours: how to institutionalize popular sovereignty, how to define nationhood, and how to grasp the possibility and limits of global governance. These are pivotal but often neglected dimensions of Tocqueville’s work, and this fresh look at his writings provides a powerful framework for addressing the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. Recovering a richer liberalism capable of weathering today’s political storms, Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours explains how we can reclaim nationalism as a liberal force and reimagine sovereignty in a global age—and do so with one of democracy’s most discerning thinkers as our guide. (shrink)

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing x (...) into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to analyse the potential for political emancipation that lies within Kant’s conception of Aufklärung, in critical dialogue with enlightenment critics and specialised Kantian literature. My thesis is that Kant’s concept of enlightenment is intrinsically political and so it must be studied from the point of view of his political philosophy, which was fully developed in the decade of the 1790s. From this standpoint, I propose we study the role and place of Aufklärung (...) within Kant’s central political thesis, to wit: that only the united will of the people can be a legitimate authority. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Manfred Kuehn’s observation that Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that the ethical community must be a community under God seems “a bit strained.” After clarifying Kant’s train of thought that results in his conception of the ethical community in the form of the “visible church,” the paper argues that the seemingly strong religious dimension may be misleading. If we understand the ethical community to be the development of (...) the kingdom of ends in the Groundwork, it becomes apparent that Kant’s notion of God’s “sovereignty” over the ethical community is a shared sovereignty lodged in rationality and not in God’s own will. The “strain” that Kuehn senses thus suggests the potentially gratuitous nature of Kant’s references to God’s sovereignty over the ethical community. Despite the initial appearances, Kant’s account of the ethical community in the form of the visible church is, over the long term, closer to a secularizing move than to a robustly religious one. (shrink)