In “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defines the public use of reason as “that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers.” Commentators rarely note Kant’s reference to “scholarship” in this passage and, when they do, they often disagree about its meaning and significance. This paper addresses those disagreements by exploring discussions of scholarship in Kant’s logic lectures as well as in later works like The Conflict (...) of the Faculties. These sources suggest that Kant defends a rigorous conception of scholarship, which may not be consistent with liberal and egalitarian interpretations of the public use of reason. The paper concludes that Kant’s account of the public use of reason provides only a limited defense of freedoms of speech and of the press, which is neither as liberal nor as egalitarian as other commentators have suggested. (shrink)
This article argues that Kant's essay on enlightenment responds to Moses Mendelssohn's defense of the freedom of conscience in Jerusalem. While Mendelssohn holds that the freedom of conscience as an inalienable right, Kant argues that the use of one's reason may be constrained by oaths. Kant calls such a constrained use of reason the private use of reason. While he also defends the unconditional freedom of the public use of reason, Kant believes that one makes oneself a part of the (...) machinery of the church or state by swearing an oath to and assuming a position within those institutions. -/- The appendix to this article includes a translation of Mendelssohn's comments on Kant's enlightenment essay, "Public and Private Use of Reason.". (shrink)
This article argues that Immanuel Kant recreates in his critical philosophy one of the most distinctive features of Christian Wolff’s rationalism—the marriage of reason and experience. The article begins with an overview of Wolff’s connubium and then surveys the reasons some of his contemporaries opposed the marriage of reason and experience, paying special attention to the distinctions between phenomena and noumena, sensible and intellectual cognition, and empirical and pure cognition that Kant employs in his inaugural dissertation On the Form and (...) Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World. The final section of the article argues that, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant rejects the anticonnubialist positions he defended in his inaugural dissertation and introduces a new account of the relation between reason and experience that recreates Wolff’s connubium within the context of his critical philosophy. (shrink)
This article considers the reasons Kant rejects the possibility of a science of aesthetics throughout his career. It begins by surveying the background of Kant’s denial, focusing first on the introduction of aesthetics as a new science in the works of Alexander Baumgarten and Georg Friedrich Meier. After showing that there are numerous ambiguities in the way Baumgarten and Meier present their new science, the article considers Kant’s account of the differences between aesthetics and logic in the transcripts of his (...) Lectures on Logic. Because Kant uses the differences between aesthetics and logic to explain why logic is and aesthetics is not a science, these discussions provide a great deal of insight into his conception of science as well as his views on aesthetics. Finally, the article addresses the reasons Kant continues to insist that aesthetics is not a science but “a mere critique of taste” after he announces his discovery of the a priori principles of aesthetic judgment. (shrink)
The editors of the French edition of Michel Foucault's Introduction to Kant's Anthropology claim that Foucault started rereading Kant through Nietzsche in 1952 and then began rereading Kant and Nietzsche through Heidegger in 1953. This claim has not received much attention in the scholarly literature, but its significance should not be underestimated. In this article, I assess the likelihood that the editor’s claim is true and show how Foucault’s introduction to Kant’s Anthropology and his comments about Kant in The Order (...) of Things echo the concerns about finitude and subjectivity in Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I then argue that Foucault's later preoccupation with Kant's essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? should be regarded as an attempt to develop an alternative to the Heideggerian interpretation of Kant, and the preoccupation with finitude, that had played such an important role in Foucault’s earlier works. (shrink)
A clear and concise account of the relationship between aesthetics and philosophy in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the development of aesthetics as a discipline in its own right.
One of the most important concepts Baumgarten introduces in his Reflections on Poetry is the concept of sensible perfection. It is surprising that Baumgarten does not elaborate upon this concept in his Metaphysics, since it plays such an important role in the new science of aesthetics that he proposes at the end of the Reflections on Poetry and then further develops in the Aesthetics. This article considers the significance of the absence of sensible perfection from the Metaphysics and its implications (...) for Baumgarten’s aesthetics, before turning to the use Meier and Kant make of Baumgarten’s concept. In the end, this article shows that Baumgarten did not abandon his conception of sensible perfection in the Metaphysics, though its influence declined significantly after Kant rejected the idea that sensibility and the understanding could be distinguished by the perfections of their cognition. (shrink)
This article considers three objections Immanuel Kant raises against Alexander Baumgarten’s plan for a science of aesthetics at different points in his career. Although Kant’s objections appear to be contradictory, this article argues that the contradiction is the result of an anachronism in the composition of Kant’s Logic. When the contradiction is resolved, it becomes apparent that Kant’s main reason for rejecting Baumgarten’s aesthetics during the pre-critical period—the lack of a priori principles for a critique of taste—loses its force after (...) Kant develops a kind of critique that yields a priori principles and then discovers a priori principles of aesthetic judgment. Instead of withdrawing his objections, Kant finds different reasons to deny that aesthetics can be a science, based on the distinction between determining and reflective judgments. (shrink)
In his new book, Kant and Mysticism, Stephen Palmquist argues that Kant had already formulated his critical method by the mid-1760s and that it emerged from his reflections on Swedenborg’s mystical visions. In order to evaluate these claims, I consider Kant’s correspondence with Charlotte von Knobloch and Moses Mendelssohn before and after the publication of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer; the context in which Kant published Dreams; and the method he employs when he discusses Swedenborg’s visions in that work. I conclude (...) that Kant’s critical method was not well-formed during the 1760s and did not emerge from Kant’s reflections on Swedenborg. (shrink)
Critique has been a central theme in the German philosophical tradition since the publication of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Some successors turned Kant's critique against itself and used it to challenge the authority of his system. Others extended his critique, applying it to aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy and generating new forms of criticism that were then taken up by Idealism, Romanticism, Marxism, Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology, and Critical Theory. Yet these various legacies of Kantian critique are rarely (...) brought into dialogue. Critique in German Philosophy seeks to address this problem by exploring the figures, works, movements, and philosophical subfields that have contributed to the development of the concept of critique in German philosophy, as well as their relation to one another. In so doing, it also challenges the standard ways philosophers have understood the task of philosophical critique. Attending to both canonical and previously overlooked texts and thinkers, the contributors bring to light alternative conceptions of critique in the German philosophical tradition with profound implications. In offering a critical revision of the history of modern European philosophy, the volume also raises new questions about what it means for philosophy to be "critical" today. (shrink)
Most accounts of the historical a priori can be traced back to Husserlian phenomenology. Foucault’s appeals to the historical a priori are more problematic because of his hostility to this tradition. In this paper, I argue that Foucault’s diplôme thesis on Hegel, his studies of Kant’s Anthropology, his response to critics of The Order of Things, and his later work on Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” all suggest that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy helped to (...) shape his conception of the historical a priori. (shrink)
Aesthetics is the part of contemporary academic philosophy that is concerned with art, beauty, criticism, and taste. As such, it must address metaphysical issues, epistemic problems, and questions of value. This makes it difficult to present a coherent account of the subject matter of aesthetics. In this article, I argue that this difficulty is the result of ambiguities and contradictions that arose in disputes about the relationship between the science of aesthetics, the critique of taste, and the philosophy of art (...) in German philosophy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. By reconstructing the history of these debates, I hope to shed new light on the origins of aesthetics as a discipline and to explain why its subject matter and status within philosophy are still so difficult to define. (shrink)
Throughout his career, Immanuel Kant objects that Leibniz and Wolff make the distinction between sensible and intellectual cognition into a “merely logical” distinction. Although it is not clear that anyone in the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition actually holds this view, Kant’s objection helps to define the “real” distinction between sensible and intellectual cognition that he defends in his inaugural dissertation in 1770. Kant raises the same objection against Leibniz and Wolff in the Critique of Pure Reason, but replaces the “real” distinction he (...) defends in his inaugural dissertation with a new “transcendental” distinction between intuitions and concepts. This paper examines Kant’s objection to Leibniz and Wolff and the different alternatives he proposes, in order to highlight an important element in the development of his critical philosophy. (shrink)
One of the most important concepts Baumgarten introduces in his Reflections on Poetry is the concept of sensible perfection. It is surprising that Baumgarten does not elaborate upon this concept in his Metaphysics, since it plays such an important role in the new science of aesthetics that he proposes at the end of the Reflections on Poetry and then further develops in the Aesthetics. This article considers the significance of the absence of sensible perfection from the Metaphysics and its implications (...) for Baumgarten’s aesthetics, before tuming to the use Meier and Kant make of Baumgarten’s concept. In the end, this article shows that Baumgarten did not abandon his conception of sensible perfection in the Metaphysics, though its influence declined significantly after Kant rejected the idea that sensibility and the understanding could be distinguished by the perfections of their cognition. (shrink)
