In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 301-312 [Access article in PDF] Kant on Property: The Problem of Permissive Law Brian Tierney In a pathbreaking article published in 1982 Reinhold Brandt called attention to the significance of the concept of permissive natural law in Kant's political philosophy. Brandt noted that Kant's "rightful concept of practical reason" or "permissive law of practical reason" was of (...) fundamental importance for understanding the whole theory of the Rechtslehre, and he complained that the issue had been virtually ignored in the recent secondary literature. 1 Since then others have taken up the theme, but it remains relatively neglected in the vast modern literature on Kant. In the work of Brandt and in some other recent explorations of this question a primary concern has been to relate Kant's doctrine to other aspects of his critical theory. Brandt himself, for instance, compared the "provisional" and "peremptory" rights mentioned in the Doctrine of Right with the "problematic" and "assertoric" judgments of the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem that I want to consider is rather different. In the following study I want to consider primarily the internal structure of the Doctrine of Right and specifically to ask whether Kant's appeal to permissive natural law served a constructive purpose in the theory of property that he presented in that work or whether it was perhaps subversive of the argument that he developed. 2 This will require [End Page 301] some discussion of the other usages of the idea of permissive law that we find scattered in Kant's later writings. In pursuing such an inquiry we encounter various difficulties and apparent anomalies in Kant's teaching. I want finally to suggest that we might understand those difficulties better if we were to situate Kant's work in a broader historical context than those that have previously been considered, bearing in mind that the concept of permissive natural law had been discussed by jurists and political philosophers for several centuries before Kant took up the argument. Kant on Property When approaching Kant's Doctrine of Right it may be salutary to recall a remark of Mary Gregor, the translator of the work and a sympathetic reader of it. "Kant has never been accused of underestimating his readers," Gregor wrote, "but he seldom treats them so harshly." 3 The difficulty of the work is compounded by the fact that the text as we have it is apparently in a mutilated condition, with some passages transposed from their original contexts. Any reading of such a text will be open to dispute; but it seems necessary to attempt at least an outline of Kant's doctrine and to mention some of its complexities if we are to understand the function of permissive natural law in the argument presented.Kant's purpose was to formulate a doctrine of property based on reason alone, a doctrine in which "abstraction is made from all spatial and temporal conditions." 4 The principles he deduced were intended to apply to anyone "merely because and insofar as he is free and has practical reason." 5 The whole subsequent argument revolved around these concepts of practical reason and human freedom. Kant began by presenting some basic propositions and definitions. Obligation, he wrote, was "the necessity of a free action under a categorical imperative of reason." And an action was permitted or licit when it was not contrary to obligation. This freedom of action was called a moral faculty (facultas moralis). 6 According to Kant, the only innate right inhering in all persons was a right to freedom (defined as "independence from being coerced by another's [End Page 302] choice") insofar as this freedom could coexist with the freedom of all others. 7 A corresponding universal law of Right established the rule: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law." 8External laws imposed by another evidently did hinder one's freedom. Kant therefore held that a person was... (shrink)

For all contract theorists, including Kant, political legitimacy is based upon the consent of the governed. The differences amongst them begin to emerge when we inquire into the motivations and considerations which lead up to the agreement. For Kant, consent to the social contract is not based upon considerations of rational self-interest or prudence, nor upon a natural right to self-preservation and the guarantee of absolute property rights, but upon a moral obligation to institutionalize and make peremptory (...) in a social contract property rights that in the state of nature have only a provisional character. Whether this approach ultimately makes the idea of a voluntary agreement superfluous is a question I will address below. First I would like to consider the unique status Kant assigns to property rights in his theory of the social contract. This status has for the most part not been observed in the secondary literature, and Kant has even been accused of falling behind the achievements of Locke and Rousseau by grounding property rights on an element of brute force. However, since Kant himself espoused a labor theory of property rights in his earlier writings, it is important to consider carefully the basis for its subsequent rejection in the Rechtslehre. Further, since Kant’s theory of property rights constitutes an alternative to Locke, it may be possible to find within the contract tradition an alternative to the view of property rights found in some of its contemporary versions. (shrink)

This paper provides an entrance into central discussions regarding Kant’s account of property. The first section shows how Kant engages and transforms important, related proposals from Hobbes and Locke as well as how the ‘libertarian’ and ‘liberal republican’ interpretive traditions differ in their readings on these points. Since Kantian theories for a long time didn’t focus on Kant’s Doctrine of Right but instead followed Rawls’s lead by developing Kantian theories grounded on Kant’s (meta-) ethical writings, (...) the second section focuses on property discussions found in the Rawlsian tradition. The final section shows how important contemporary work in the Kantian tradition goes beyond Rawlsian, libertarian, and liberal republican concerns of distributive justice among free and equal citizens, to include questions central to, for example, the philosophy of care, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of sex and love, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

There is widespread view among numerous aestheticians that aesthetic and value properties are response-dependent. According to some philosophers the dependence has a rich and multilayered structure: value qualities (e.g. beauty) depend on our response to aesthetic properties (e.g. harmonious), which in turn depend on our response to a pattern of primary and secondary qualities (shapes and colors). Secondary qualities are themselves response-dependent. The basic dependence relation is thus iterated. The resulting structure is one of iterated response-dependence. The integral part of (...) such a position is a relational view, best captured by the response-dispositional analysis: My states of being appeared to magnificently in front of a painting manifests the disposition of painting to induce such experience in the normal viewer.There are two main objections against the dispositional analysis: (1) argument from circularity and (2) argument from introducing two kinds of quality, one categorical, for experiential states, and one dispositional for objects. In this paper we will suggest the arguments against second objection. (shrink)

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external (...) freedom - her ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)

The notion of Self plays a significant role in the philosophical speculations of Buddha and Wittgenstein. For the Buddha, ‘Self’ has empirical validity without ultimate reality. However, the Real Self is transcendent. It is the Absolute which is immanent as well as transcendent. It cannot therefore be bound to thought-constructions. The Absolute is Nirvāṇa; it is peaceful, immortal and unproduced which is unspeakable and can only be realised through immediate spiritual experience. To deal with Nirvāṇa rigourously, Buddha upholds a negative (...) method of describing it as final. He prefers to subscribe to the philosophy of silence, for the bliss of Nirvāṇa is beyond empirical reality. Some striking affinities with such Buddhist notion of Self can be found in Wittgensteinian philosophy of Self. For Wittgenstein, the ‘Self’ comes into being through one’s own world. The Self or the metaphysical subject does not belong to the world; rather it is the limit of the world. The metaphysical Self is different from the empirical Self or ego with which psychology deals. The psychological self pertains to and explains the worldly state-of-affair. Besides, the philosophical Self or I is not the human being, the human body or the human soul with psychological properties, but the boundary (not a part) of the world. Self or I is not the name of a person. It therefore is inexplicable. Since it is unspeakable, we must be silent about it, for whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Wittgenstein finally submits that this is all that really matters in human life. A comparative study of the two great philosophers suggests that the Buddhist philosophy of Self apparently echoes in the Wittgensteinian philosophy of Self. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the role played by context in art. In this regard I examine three theories linked to the names of J. Levinson, G. Currie and D. Davies. Levinson’s arguments undermine the structural theory. He finds it objectionable because it makes the individuation of artworks independent of their histories. Secondly, such a consequence is unacceptable because it fails to recognise that works are created rather than discovered. But, if certain general features of provenance are always work-constitutive, (...) as it seems that Levinson is willing to claim, these features must always be essential properties of works. On the other hand, consideration of our modal practice suggests that whether a given general feature of provenance is essential or non-essential depends upon the particular work in question or is “work relative”. D. Davies builds his performance theory on the basis of the critical evaluation of Currie’s action-type hypotheses (ATH). Performances, says Davies, are not to be identified with “basic actions” to which their times belong essentially, but with “doings” that permit of the sorts of variation in modal properties required by the work-relativity of modality. He is also a fierce critic of the contextualist account. Contextualism is in his view unable to reflect the fact that aspects of provenance bear upon our modal judgements with variable force. In the second part of the paper I consider Davies’s “modality principle”. Davies is inclined to defend the claim that labels used for designation of works are rigid designators. Such a view offers a ground for discussion about the historicity of art. What has been meant when people claim that art is an historical concept? I argue that any historical theory implies a two-dimensional notion of “art”. At the end of the paper I suggest that Davies should embrace the theory of contingent identity and not the colocationist view about the relationship that exists between a particular artwork and its physical bearer. (shrink)

Electroencephalography provides a non-invasive means to advancing our understanding of the development and function of the brain. However, the majority of the world’s population residing in low and middle income countries has historically been limited from contributing to, and thereby benefiting from, such neurophysiological research, due to lack of scalable validated methods of EEG data collection. In this study, we establish a standard operating protocol to collect approximately 3 min each of eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG data using a low-cost (...) portable EEG device in rural households through formative work in the community. We then evaluate the acceptability of these EEG assessments to young children and feasibility of administering them through non-specialist workers. Finally, we describe properties of the EEG recordings obtained using this novel approach to EEG data collection. The formative phase was conducted with 9 families which informed protocols for consenting, child engagement strategies and data collection. The protocol was then implemented on 1265 families. 977 children and 1199 adults provided resting-state data for this study. 259 children refused to wear the EEG cap or removed it, and 58 children refused the eyes-closed recording session. Hardware or software issues were experienced during 30 and 25 recordings in eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions respectively. Disturbances during the recording sessions were rare and included participants moving their heads, touching the EEG headset with their hands, opening their eyes within the eyes-closed recording session, and presence of loud sounds in the testing environment. Similar to findings in laboratory-based studies from high-income settings, the percentage of recordings which showed an alpha peak was higher in eyes-closed than eyes-open condition, with the peak occurring most frequently in electrodes at O1 and O2 positions, and the mean frequency of the alpha peak was found to be lower in children as compared to adults. We observed a deterioration in the EEG signal with prolonged device usage. This study demonstrates the acceptability, feasibility and utility of conducting EEG research at scale in a rural low-resource community, while highlighting its potential limitations, and offers the impetus needed to further refine the methods and devices and validate such scalable methods to overcome existing research inequity. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant often remarks that phenomena consist only in relations. This is a highly puzzling thesis that is not easily reconcilable with the explanation of natural processes. More specifically, it is not clear whether and how a network of mere relations (such as ‘being higher than’, ‘being next to’, etc.) can give rise to genuine changes in nature. I call this the problem of global relationality. In this paper, I suggest a solution to this (...) problem by showing that Kant’s specific sense of relationality is ultimately grounded in the spatiality of phenomena and differs from the one usually assumed in the contemporary debate. I argue that a subset of empirical properties can be regarded as ‘comparatively intrinsic’ since they preserve a genuine sense of intrinsicness while being fully relational in space. As a result, real changes can take place in the phenomenal realm if they concern comparatively intrinsic properties of empirical objects. (shrink)

Kant's political philosophy in general is characterized by two aspects which sometimes compete with each other and sometimes supplement each other: an individualist element on the one hand and a social or "communitarian" element on the other hand. This paper deals with Kant's theory of private property. It attempts to show something that is usually overlooked in the secondary literature: that Kant has two, not just one argument for property. One is based on his theory (...) of freedom and expresses the individualist aspect of his thinking. The other argument is based on Kant's principle of right and expresses the social aspect of his political thought. Despite some problems with his arguments the complexity of Kant's theory remains impressive. (shrink)

A mistaken interpretation of Kant as an intellectual property advocate.

_ Source: _Volume 38, Issue 1, pp 106 - 128 This paper is interested in the critical potential of the idea of original common possession of the Earth. On the basis of a comparative analysis of Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant, it shows how different the meaning of this idea can be within a theory of property or territory. The first part is devoted to Grotius’s account of why and how the institution of property was progressively introduced. (...) It highlights the importance this account attaches to the intention of the first distributors for a good understanding of property laws, and in particular, for an understanding of their non-application in situations of extreme necessity. The second part takes the opposite path and shows that although Kant rejects the very existence of a right of necessity, the idea that one might be liberated from a law is not completely absent from, and even plays a crucial role in, his account of property. Clarification of this role ultimately leads us back to the idea of original possession in common of the Earth. (shrink)

Kant takes the idea of autonomy of the will to be his distinctive contribution to moral philosophy. However, this idea is more nuanced and complicated than one might think. In this chapter, I sketch the rough outlines of Kant’s idea of autonomy of the will while also highlighting contentious exegetical issues that give rise to various possible interpretations. I tentatively defend four basic claims. First, autonomy primarily features in Kant’s account of moral agency, as the condition of (...) the possibility of moral obligation. Second, autonomy amounts to a metaphysical property as well as a normative principle and a psychological capacity. Third, although there is legitimate scholarly disagreement about whether or not autonomy involves self-legislation of the moral law, there is good reason to believe it underwrites an ‘inside-out’ (as opposed to ‘outside-in’) conception of the relationship between the will and moral requirements. Fourth, persons have dignity because their autonomy makes them members in the set of beings over whom the categorical imperative requires us to universalise our maxims, not because autonomy is an independently important property. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant on the Method of MathematicsEmily Carson1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper will touch on three very general but closely related questions about Kant’s philosophy. First, on the role of mathematics as a paradigm of knowledge in the development of Kant’s Critical philosophy; second, on the nature of Kant’s opposition to his Leibnizean predecessors and its role in the development of the Critical philosophy; and finally, on the (...) specific role of intuition in Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. One of the points that I want to make is that recognizing the importance of these first two issues is essential to giving an adequate account of the third. That is, only by appreciating how Kant uses the example of mathematical knowledge, and in particular the objections he had to previous accounts of such knowledge, can we understand the philosophical role that he ascribes to intuition in his own account of mathematics.I don’t propose to explain the details of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, but rather to compare his views on mathematics in the pre-Critical Prize Essay of 1764 to those of the Critique of Pure Reason, with the aim of showing how Kant’s doctrine of construction in pure intuition arises out of a combination of two factors: first, his attempt to ground the distinction between the respective methods of mathematics and philosophy, and second, his concern to defend the reality of mathematical knowledge against the views of those he called ‘the metaphysicians.’ The first factor demands an account of the certainty of mathematics, the second requires an account of its content. I shall argue that there is a possible conflict between Kant’s accounts of these features in the Prize Essay, a possibility which is finally ruled out only by means of the Critical doctrine of pure intuition. So I hope to show that there is a significant philosophical role for intuition in Kant’s account of mathematical knowledge (over and above the more logical role attributed to it on readings [End Page 629] such as those of Friedman, Beth, and Hintikka1) in reconciling the content of mathematics and its certainty.2. THE MATHEMATICIANS VS. THE METAPHYSICIANSThroughout his early writings, Kant appealed to the evidence and certainty of mathematics; his attitude towards metaphysics, however, underwent a dramatic shift. In the Physical Monadology of 1756, Kant asked how metaphysics and geometry can be united,[f] or the former peremptorily denies that space is infinitely divisible, while the latter, with its usual certainty, asserts that it is infinitely divisible. Geometry contends that empty space is necessary for free motion, while metaphysics hisses the idea off the stage. Geometry holds universal attraction or gravitation to be hardly explicable by mechanical causes but shows that it derives from the forces which are inherent in bodies at rest and which act at a distance, whereas metaphysics dismisses the notion as an empty delusion of the imagination [1:475–6].2He attempted in this work to reconcile the respective positions of metaphysics and geometry regarding infinite divisibility, thereby demonstrating that “it is neither the case that the geometer is mistaken nor that the opinion to be found among metaphysicians deviates from the truth” [1:480]. But in a series of works from 1762–3, Kant reveals a markedly different attitude towards metaphysics. For example, in “The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God,” Kant says:the mania for method and the imitation of the mathematician, who advances with a sure step along a well-surfaced road, have occasioned a large number of such mishaps on the slippery ground of metaphysics. These mishaps are constantly before one’s eyes, but there is little hope that people will be warned by them, or that they will learn to be more circumspect as a result [2:71].In contrast, Kant describes the geometer as uncovering “with the greatest certainty” the most secret properties of that which is extended [2:70]. But the less conciliatory attitude to metaphysics comes out most clearly in Kant’s actual procedure in “The only possible argument.” In the Seventh Reflection, he presents an attempt to explain the origin of... (shrink)

For Kant, the form of a subject's experience of an object provides the normative basis for an aesthetic judgement about it. In other words, if the subject's experience of an object has certain structural properties, then Kant thinks she can legitimately judge that the object is beautiful - and that it is beautiful for everyone. My goal in this paper is to provide a new account of how this 'subjective universalism' is supposed to work. In doing so, I (...) appeal to Kant's notions of an aesthetic idea and an aesthetic attribute, and the connection that Kant makes between an object's expression of rational and the normativity of aesthetic judgements about it. -/- . (shrink)

Kant claims that the nominal definition of truth is: “Truth is the agreement of cognition with its object”. In this paper, I analyse the relevant features of Kant's theory of definition in order to explain the meaning of that claim and its consequences for the vexed question of whether Kant endorses or rejects a correspondence theory of truth. I conclude that Kant's claim implies neither that he holds, nor that he rejects, a correspondence theory of truth. (...) Kant's claim is not a generic way of setting aside a correspondence definition of truth, or of considering it uninformative. Being the nominal definition of truth, the formula “truth is the agreement of cognition with its object” illustrates the meaning of the predicate “is true” and people's ordinary conception of truth. True judgements correspond to the objects they are about. However, there could be more to the property of truth than correspondence. (shrink)

Kant's central goal in the Critique of Pure Reason is to investigate conditions of the possibility of cognition. He assumes that what is given to us by means of the senses is not sufficient for cognition. The senses yield us only the "raw material" for cognition. It is because of our conceptual apparatus that we are able to determine, or discriminate among, what is presented by the senses. ;My main task in the dissertation is to examine Kant's account (...) of the nature of concepts relevant for empirical cognition. Contrary to some recent commentators, like Walsh, and Guyer, I conclude that Kant's account is philosophically defensible and that it has relevance to issues of contemporary concern in epistemology. ;Central to Kant's account of the possibility of empirical concepts is his understanding of concepts as rules. Even empirical concepts, like 'table' and 'book', function as rules because of their multiple instantiability. By means of such rules we identify and re-identify items of perceptual encounters and ascribe to them various properties and relations. However, the employment of such concepts yields cognition only if they are not formed and applied arbitrarily. Instead, those concepts have to be formed and employed in accordance with some rules. Kant argues that categorial concepts, like 'substance' and 'cause', function as meta-rules for the formation and cognitive application of empirical concepts. ;Kant further argues that categories are not arbitrary rules. I attempt to clarify and defend Kant's view by comparing categories with Searlean constitutive rules. By means of categories we construct cognizable properties for items of perceptual encounters; they must conform to categories for the reason that only by means of the application of categories can any of them become objects of cognition. It is, thus, the role of constitutive rules of cognition which proves the legitimate right of categories to be employed in cognition. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Immanuel Kant proposes a puzzling account of the experience of the beautiful: that aesthetic judgments are both subjective and speak with a universal voice. 1 These properties – the subjective and the universal – seem mutually exclusive but Kant maintains that they are compatible if we explain aesthetic judgment in terms of the mind’s a priori structure, as explicated in his earlier Critique of Pure Reason. Kant advances two major (...) claims towards arguing for the compatibility of the subjectivity and universality of the experience of beauty: that aesthetic judgments are ‘disinterested’, and that the universality of an aesthetic judgment derives from the transcendental idealist’s account of ordinary spatio-temporal experience – that is, our ordinary cognitive framework can explain the experience of beauty. If correct, these two claims support the thesis that, while the experience of beauty is wholly subjective, it nevertheless speaks with a universal voice . I will move to interpret Kant’s theory of the beautiful with reference to his earlier two Critiques in order to better understand the marriage of subjectivity and universality. In turn, this re- veals a deeper symmetry between the disinterestedness of the experience of beauty and the freedom of moral action, allowing Kant to maintain, as he indeed does, that “beauty is the symbol of morality.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analyzed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates (...) a general notion of substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes several key themes in Kant’s views about modality. We begin with the pre-critical Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, in which Kant distinguishes between formal and material elements of possibility, claims that all possibility requires an actual ground, and argues for the existence of a single necessary being. We then briefly consider how Kant’s views change in his mature period, especially concerning the role of form and thought (...) in defining modality. Kant’s mature views, however, present two difficult interpretive puzzles. The first puzzle concerns whether Kant has a generally reductive view of modality. While Kant’s views on logical modality, the role of actuality in grounding possibility, and the relation of modality to cognition all suggest reduction, we argue that the categorial status of modal concepts and the difficulty in even identifying amodal grounds for modal facts all suggest a non-reductive view. The second puzzle concerns whether Kant accepts modal facts or properties at the noumenal level. While Kant’s appeal to noumenal necessary connections, the contingency of noumenal willing, and the idea of a necessary noumenal being suggest that he endorses noumenal modality, his claims that modal concepts express only relations to the faculty of cognition and his claim that modal concepts arise from our distinctive psychological structures, we argue, suggest that he rejects noumenal modality. We conclude by considering potential solutions to these puzzles. (shrink)

Why did Kant write the Critique of Judgment, and why did he say that his analysis of the judgment of taste — his technical term for our enjoyment of beauty — is the most important part of it? Kant claims that his analysis of taste “reveals a property of our faculty of cognition that without this analysis would have remained unknown” (KU §8, 5:213). The clue lies in Kant’s view that while taste is an aesthetic, and (...) non-cognitive, mode of judgment, it nevertheless involves the “free play” of cognitive capacities that is pleasurable in some way that ordinary cognitive business is not. My thesis is that the judgment of taste reveals a pleasure that is not usually apparent when we understand something in particular, but which is nevertheless proper to the activity of understanding as such. This matters, I argue, because in this way the judgment of taste points to a standard of cognitive virtue. (shrink)

By starting from the idea of processes of numerical assignment, an explication, á la Kant, of the concept of property is proposed. In this way two results are achieved: on the one hand, the Kantian doctrine of explication is revaluated; on the other hand, the notion of property is tackled from an empiricist point of view based on the representational theory of measurement.

We all know what Kant means by autonomy: “the property of the will by which it is a law to itself ” , or, since any law must be universal, the condition of an agent who is “subject only to laws given by himself but still universal” . Or do we know what Kant means by autonomy? There are a number of questions here. First, Kant's initial definition of autonomy itself raises the question of why the (...) property of the will being a law to itself should be equivalent to its independence from any property of objects of volition. It is also natural to ask, how does autonomy as Kant conceives it relate to more familiar notions of freedom. For example, consider Locke's conception of freedom as the condition of a person “to think, or not to think; to move, or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind,” rather than according to the preference or direction of any other person. What is the relation between autonomy and this traditional conception of freedom as the liberty of an agent? And what is the relation of autonomy to the traditional conception of freedom of the will; that is, the condition that obtains, as G. E. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason remains one of the most opaque of Kant's published writings. Though this opacity belongs, partly, to the text itself, a key claim of this article is that this opacity stems also from the narrow lenses through which his readers view this text. Often read as part of Kant's moral philosophy or his universal history, the literature has thus far neglected a different vantage point on the Religion, one that does not refute (...) the utility of these lenses but complements them. This paper places the Religion alongside parts of Kant's corpus that it is less typically paired with, namely his natural history writings—in particular, his writings on the concept of race and the development of the human races. I argue that by doing so, we can shed much light on Kant's infamous claim that there is a radical evil in the human species. More precisely, we will come to appreciate that this evil is not, as it is usually understood, a static property or fixed characteristic of human beings. Instead, radical evil concerns a dynamic, changing defect in human nature that increasingly threatens our aspirations to collective moral perfection. (shrink)

In this article I discuss whether from Kant’s philosophy we can determine a moral duty to deal with global inequality, a problem that in Kant’s time was inexistent since it is a modern trend resulting from the industrial revolution. In doing this, I consider three main issues related to Kant’s thought and partially re-developed by contemporary authors: the individual moral duty to collaborate with nature’s purposiveness, which is aimed at attaining perpetual peace through humans fully developing their (...) capacities, the normative requirement to reform the global economic structure so as to prevent cases of coercion and deception suffered by vulnerable economic agents, and the validation of global property titles, in the same way as occurs at the national level when people leave the state of nature and enter a civil condition. The aim of the article is to investigate whether in Kant’s philosophy of history and of right, which can be considered as the theoretical connection point between the ancient cosmopolitan aspiration and a modern and articulate cosmopolitan philosophy, we may find some first moral insights regarding the contemporary debate over the existence of global duties of socio-economic justice. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the way Kant's distinction between duties of right and duties of virtue operates at the interstate level. I argue that his Right of Nations (V ölkerrecht) can be interpreted as a duty to establish a kind of interstate distributive justice (that is, as a duty to secure states in their independence and territorial possessions), which is called for to secure domestic distributive justice and to protect individuals' freedom and private property. Or at least this (...) is 'ideal theory' for, as I specify, this cosmopolitan linkage is compromised by Kant's endeavour to accomodate the existence of non-republican states. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant’s account of propositional content and its implications for the relationship between his notions of knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). While previous commentators commonly read Kant as holding a Fregean theory of propositional content, in this paper I argue that Kant’s theory of propositional content aligns more closely with Peter Hanks’ recent account. According to my reading, Kant holds that individual acts of judging are both ontologically and explanatorily prior to propositions or Kantian (...) judgments (Urteil). Furthermore, on my reading, acts of judging for Kant are acts of assertively predicating a property of an object rather than merely acts of neutral predication. This reading challenges the lately popular view that Kant’s notions of knowledge and cognition are not only distinct but also disjunct. I instead suggest that we should regard Kantian knowledge that requires cognitions as its grounds as a species of Kantian cognitions. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is no discrepancy between Kant's Doctrine of Right (The Metaphysics of Morals) (1797), which legally permits lies that do not deprive someone of their rights or property, and his On a Supposed Right to Lie from Love of Humanity (1797), which argues that it would be a crime to lie to a murderer about the whereabouts of the innocent person he is pursuing.

This paper describes Kant’s complex position on extension, showing how it emerges from the various ways in which he reacts to the views of Descartes, Locke, Newton, and Leibniz. Specifically, the paper argues that Kant’s views are closer to Leibniz’s than they are to those of Descartes, Locke, and Newton, insofar as Kant and Leibniz both reject the view that extension is a fundamental property, holding instead that it is explicable (at least in part) on the (...) basis of more fundamental forces. Kant disagrees with Leibniz, however, insofar as he rejects Leibniz’s distinctive commitments to certain metaphysical doctrines (such as pre-established harmony) and to active and passive primitive and derivative forces, opting, instead, for a Newtonian inspired conception of attractive and repulsive forces. In this way, the Critical Kant develops a hybrid position that attempts to make good use of aspects of both Leibniz’s and Newton’s accounts as he articulates his own distinctive position. (shrink)

The first part of Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals , Rechtslehre , has usually been discussed as a political treatise. But there are parallels between law and ethics in Kant; lawgiving in either realm is a combination of precept and incentive. In works that present his core moral philosophy of inner freedom, this freedom is an internal ethical freedom based on an underlying purely moral incentive, whose adequacy is a transcendental assumption of this part of Kant's moral (...) philosophy. But this inner freedom is paralleled by Kant's account of external freedom, where our external rights, including rights to property, are secured based on the deterrent effect of punishment under criminal law for violations of the rights of others. When we look at the Rechtslehre thus as part of Kant's practical philosophy we notice: Kant's view is that the validity of a legal precept entails an adequate incentive for acting in accord with the precept. The scope of law, and hence of imputation under law, is limited in various ways by the reach of the external incentives of deterrence, including actions based on a so-called "right of necessity." There are parallels between Kant's arguments for extending the categorical imperative as a principle for the use of our freedom to ends in the Tugendlehre and to objects in the Rechtslehre . Kant's theory of punishment, though retributivist in how it assigns appropriate punishment, is teleological/deterrent in providing incentives for not violating positive laws. Der erste Teil in Kants Werk Die Metaphysik der Sitten , die Rechtslehre , wird üblicherweise als eine politische Abhandlung diskutiert. Aber es gibt Parallelen zwischen Recht und Ethik bei Kant. Gesetzgebung ist in beiden Bereichen eine Kombination von Gesetz und Triebfeder. In den Arbeiten, die das eigentliche Herzstück von Kants Tugendlehre behandeln, ist die Freiheit eine innere ethische Freiheit, die auf einer rein moralischen Triebfeder basiert, deren Angemessenheit und Zulänglichkeit eine transzendentale Annahme dieses Teils von Kants Moralphilosophie ist. Die innere Freiheit hat jedoch eine Parallele in Kants Darstellung der äußeren Freiheit. Hier geht es um die Sicherung unserer äußeren Rechte, einschließlich des Rechts auf Eigentum, durch den Abschreckungseffekt einer Strafe für die Verletzung der Rechte Anderer. Wenn wir die Rechtslehre gerade als Teil von Kants praktischer Philosophie verstehen, dann stellen wir fest: Kant geht davon aus, daß gültige juridische Normen stets ausreichende Triebfedern dafür enthalten, daß unser Handeln diesen Normen entspricht. Der Bereich des Rechts, und damit auch der Zurechnung unter Rechtsgesetzen, wird auf unterschiedliche Weise von der Wirksamkeit äußerer Triebfedern zur Abschreckung begrenzt. Das gilt auch für Handlungen, die auf dem sogenannten "Notrecht" beruhen. Zwischen Kants Argumenten in der Tugendlehre für die Erweiterung des kategorischen Imperativs als eines Prinzips für den Gebrauch unserer Freiheit durch die Annahme, daß es Zwecke gibt, die zugleich Pflicht sind, und dem Argument in der Rechtslehre für die Notwendigkeit der Anerkennung von Eigentumsrechten bestehen signifikante Parallelen. Kants Theorie der Strafe ist, obwohl vergeltungstheoretisch mit Blick auf die Frage der Angemessenheit einer Strafe, jedenfalls auch teleologisch/abschreckungstheoretisch konzipiert, nämlich insoweit, als die Androhung von Strafen Triebfedern für die Befolgung der positiven Rechtsgesetze bereitstellt. (shrink)

"Exemplary Originality": Kant on Genius and Imitation MARTIN GAMMON 1. INTRODUCTION ACCORDING TO ERNST CASSIRER, Kant 's discussion of genius in the Third Cri- tique stands "at the crossroads of all aesthetic discussions in the eighteenth century," in that he tries to accommodate the neo-Classical demand that art- works follow determinate rules to the Romantic insistence that aesthetic cre- ativity be free from such rules? In the Third Critique itself, Kant defends both of these criteria through the (...) doctrine of "exemplary originality." For Kant, the genius combines two qualities: on the one hand, "a talent for produc- ing that for which no rule can be given," so that "originality must be its primary property"; however, "since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for oth- ers, i.e., as a standard or rule for estimating."' On the basis of this exemplary originality, then, a genius puts "freedom from constraint of rules so into force in his art, that for art itself a new rule is won -- which is what shows a talent to be exemplary". Recently, some commentators have puzzled over the "air of paradox" sur- rounding Kant 's union of originality and exemplarity in works of genius. "If such works," Timothy Gould conjectures, "make advances on what is familiar and gain new ground, their very. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s theory of property through a comparative analysis of Gottfried Achenwall’s justification of ownership rights. I argue that at the core of Achenwall’s and Kant’s understanding of ownership rights lies the idea that rights are to be acquired through a juridical act (factum iuridicum, rechtlichen Act) of the will. However, while Achenwall thinks of this act as emerging from a private will, Kant holds that rights and obligations can only be brought about by (...) an act of the general will. By contrasting these two views, I aim to illuminate one of the main features of Kant’s theory of property, namely, that ownership rights are only possible in a rightfully constituted state. I conclude with a suggestion regarding Kant’s view of the notion of ‘provisional’ possession in the state of nature. (shrink)

The purpose of my paper is to interpret kant 's transcendental idealism by looking at his claim that space is "nothing but" ideal. My position is that if we grant to kant the thesis that space is an "a priori" condition for knowing objects, Then it follows that our notion of space can only refer to the character of our experience, Not to properties of things as they may be "in themselves." and this, I argue, Yields a sense (...) of the ideality of space. (shrink)

The paper provides a systematic account of Kant’s ‘right to be somewhere’ as introduced in the Doctrine of Right. My claim is that Kant’s concern with the concurrent existence of a plurality of corporeal agents on the earth’s surface occupies a rarely appreciated conceptual space in his mature political philosophy. In grounding a particular kind of moral relation that is ‘external’ but not property-mediated, it provides us with a fundamentally new perspective on Kant’s cosmopolitanism, which I (...) construe as a cosmopolitanism for ‘earth dwellers’. (shrink)

Kant's attempt to establish the principles behind the faculty of judgment remains one of the most important works on human reason.

This paper analyzes Immanuel Kant’s views on mechanical explanation on the basis of Christian Wolff’s idea of scientific demonstration. Kant takes mechanical explanations to explain properties of wholes in terms of their parts. I reconstruct the nature of such explanations by showing how part-whole conceptualizations in Wolff’s logic and metaphysics shape the ideal of a proper and explanatory scientific demonstration. This logico-philosophical background elucidates why Kant construes mechanical explanations as ideal explanations of nature.

Kant's views on the epistemological status of physical science provide an important example of how a philosophical system can be applied to understand the foundation of scientific theories. Michael Friedman has made considerable progress towards elucidating Kant's philosophy of science; in particular, he has argued that Kant viewed Newton's law of universal gravitation as necessary for the possibility of experiencing what Kant called true motion, which is more than the mere relative motion of appearances but is (...) different from Newton's concept of absolute motion. In this context, Friedman has provided an account of how Kant must have viewed Newton's supposed derivation of universal gravitation from Kepler's laws, based on, among other things, Kant's claim that Newton really needed to make extra assumptions in order to derive universal gravitation. In this paper, I argue that Friedman's account is incomplete for three reasons. First, Friedman has overlooked an important aspect of how Newton's third law is applied in the relevant sections of the Principia; as a result, Friedman's account partially misconstrues the relation between the planetary phenomena and the theory of universal gravitation. Second, his account fails to account for Kant's apparent belief that Kepler's laws are only empirically-based rules, even though they seem to be necessary for the derivation of universal gravitation and hence also necessary for Kant's own definition of true motion. Third, Friedman has overlooked some remarks by Kant that indicate that Kant thought the crucial properties of universal gravitation could be known without reference to the empirically determined motions of the planets and hence seemingly without any help from Newton. (shrink)

This article seeks to show the importance of Cicero for Kant by pointing out the systematic relationship between their respective views on ethics and law. Cicero was important to Kant because Cicero had already elaborated an imperative, “quasi-jural” conception of duty or obligation. Cicero had also already prefigured the distinction between ethical duties and duties of justice. The article does not establish any direct historical influence, but points out interesting systematic overlaps. The most important in the realm of (...) ethics are a universal rationalism; a rule-based normative framework of duty; and skepticism about (Cicero), or rejection of (Kant), eudaimonism. In the realm of political theory, it is the centrality of law and of property that unites both thinkers; both reject voluntarism in thinking that consensus flows from the right external laws, not the other way around, and thus creates a juridical community; and lastly, both Cicero and Kant believe that transparence, or publicity, is a key ideal that might be presupposed by both the ethical and the juridical domain. The article thus shows that both Cicero and Kant separate ethics from law, but there are indications that neither has given up the aspiration to bridge the two realms on a higher plane. This reading of Kant yields both a more Ciceronian Kant and allows us to perceive Kantian aspects of Cicero. (shrink)

: In rejecting Descartes's ontological proof for the existence of God, Gassendi maintained that existence is not a property and Kant said that it is not a "real predicate." It is commonly supposed that both are making the same claim. Some have even thought that they advance essentially the same argument for that same claim. I believe none of this is correct. Gassendi and Kant offer different arguments. And they are arguing for different conclusions. These differences stem (...) from a more fundamental one: they mean different things by existence. (shrink)

"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)

The purpose of the Cambridge edition is to offer translations of the best modern German edition of Kant's work in a uniform format suitable for Kant scholars. This volume is the first to assemble in historical sequence the writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but (...) the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully-rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series there are copious linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes shed light on the critical reception accorded Kant by the metaphysicians of his day and on Kant's own efforts to derail his opponents. (shrink)

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View essentially reflects the last lectures Kant gave for his annual course in anthropology, which he taught from 1772 until his retirement in 1796. The lectures were published in 1798, with the largest first printing of any of Kant's works. Intended for a broad audience, they reveal not only Kant's unique contribution to the newly emerging discipline of anthropology, but also his desire to offer students a practical view of the world (...) and of humanity's place in it. With its focus on what the human being 'as a free-acting being makes of himself or can and should make of himself,' the Anthropology also offers readers an application of some central elements of Kant's philosophy. This volume offers a new annotated translation of the text by Robert B. Louden, together with an introduction by Manfred Kuehn that explores the context and themes of the lectures. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Morals is Kant's major work in applied moral philosophy in which he deals with the basic principles of rights and of virtues. It comprises two parts: the 'Doctrine of Right', which deals with the rights which people have or can acquire, and the 'Doctrine of Virtue', which deals with the virtues they ought to acquire. Mary Gregor's translation, revised for publication in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series, is the only complete translation of (...) the whole text, and includes extensive annotation on Kant's difficult and sometimes unfamiliar vocabulary. A new introduction by Roger Sullivan sets the work in its historical and philosophical context. This volume will be of wide interest to students of ethics and of legal and political philosophy. (shrink)