Kant was one of the inventors of anthropology, and his lectures on anthropology were the most popular and among the most frequently given of his lecture courses. This volume contains the first translation of selections from student transcriptions of the lectures between 1772 and 1789, prior to the published version, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), which Kant edited himself at the end of his teaching career. The two most extensive texts, Anthropology (...) Friedländer (1772) and Anthropology Mrongovius (1786), are presented here in their entirety, along with selections from all the other lecture transcriptions published in the Academy edition, together with sizeable portions of the Menschenkunde (1781-1782), first published in 1831. These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history. (shrink)

Kant was one of the inventors of anthropology, and his lectures on anthropology were the most popular and among the most frequently given of his lecture courses. This volume contains the first translation of selections from student transcriptions of the lectures between 1772 and 1789, prior to the published version, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which Kant edited himself at the end of his teaching career. The two most extensive texts, Anthropology Friedländer (...) and Anthropology Mrongovius, are presented here in their entirety, along with selections from all the other lecture transcriptions published in the Academy edition, together with sizeable portions of the Menschenkunde, first published in 1831. These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology, which formed the basis of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, contain many observations on human nature, culture and psychology and illuminate his distinctive approach to the human sciences. The essays in the present volume, written by an international team of leading Kant scholars, offer the first comprehensive scholarly assessment of these lectures, their philosophical importance, their evolution and their relation to Kant's critical philosophy. They explore a wide range of (...) topics, including Kant's account of cognition, the senses, self-knowledge, freedom, passion, desire, morality, culture, education and cosmopolitanism. The volume will enrich current debates within Kantian scholarship as well as beyond, and will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of Kant, the history of anthropology, the philosophy of psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

Anthropology has recently seen a lively interest in the subject of ethics and comparative notions of morality and freedom. This masterclass brings together four of the most eminent anthropologists working in this field--Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane--to discuss, via lectures and responses, important topics facing anthropological ethics and the theoretical debates that surround it. The authors explore the ways we understand morality across many different cultural settings, asking questions such as: How do we recognize (...) the ethical in different ethnographic worlds? What constitutes agency and awareness in everyday life? What might an anthropology of ordinary ethics look like? And what happens when ethics approaches the political in both Western and non-Western societies. Contrasting perspectives and methods- and yet in complimentary ways- this masterclass will serve as an essential guide for how an anthropology of ethics can be formulated in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In the course of the last 20 years, the problem of Kant’s view of races has evolved from a marginal topic to a question which affects his critical philosophy in general, including the anthropology and its influence on contemporary social studies. The goal of our paper is to examine the anthropological role of Kant’s concept of race from the largely overlooked or underestimated perspective of his Lectures on Anthropology. Taking into account the differences between Kant’s approach in (...) the early lectures of the 1770s and early 1780s and the lectures of the late 1780s in the light of the development of the idea of race in Kant’s works, we will demonstrate that several key elements of Kant’s 1780s theory of race presented in his published works can be found in his early lectures. On the other hand, we will prove that Kant gradually abandons racial hierarchies and moral characteristics of races in his anthropological lectures of the late 1780s and in the Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View, shifting his focus to more nuanced descriptions of morals of different nations. (shrink)

Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly, between Kant's own racism on display in the lectures, and his simultaneous promotion of a universal moral theory that would unhesitatingly condemn such attitudes. -/- Reprinted in: 'Philosophies of Difference: Nature, Racism, and Sexuate Difference' edited by R. Gustafsson, R. Hill, and H. Ngo (Routledge, 2019), pp. 125-144.

For over two decades, Immanuel Kant offered a lecture course on the subject of anthropology. In 1997, a German critical edition of several different sets of student notes from this course was published, and a large selection of these notes was translated into English in 2012. The collection of thirteen new essays under review is a significant contribution to the growing literature that makes use of this lecture material to understand Kant’s anthropology in particular and to flesh out (...) other parts of Kant’s system. Scholars interested in a variety of particular issues in Kant’s philosophy are likely to find at least several chapters very worthwhile, and scholars interested in better understanding the nature and.. (shrink)

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, (...) since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. (shrink)

I. Scientific method as a mental operation [by] T. Case.--II. On some aspects of the scientific method [by] F. Gotch.--III. Physiology; its scope and method [by] C. S. Sherrington.--IV. Inheritance in animals and plants [by] W. F. R. Weldon.--V. Psycho-physical method [by] W. McDougall.--VI. The evolution of double stars [by] A. H. Fison.--VII. Anthropology: the evolution of currency and coinage [by] Sir R. C. Temple.--VIII. Archaeological evidence [by] W. M. F. Petrie.--IX. Scientific method as applied to history [by] T. (...) B. Strong. (shrink)

In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned (...) to anthropology and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists. (shrink)

This article presents a summary of the main views in Dambeck’s lectures on aesthetics on the basis of all known sources and compares the views thus obtained with views developed in German aesthetics in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, with the aim of finding their chief source and reintegrating them both into German aesthetics and, more narrowly, into the aesthetics taught at Prague University. Johann Heinrich Dambeck constructed his lecture series on the plan of Zschokke’s textbook (...) Ideen zur psychologischen Aesthetik (1793) which has never been taken into account in any other research on his lectures. The close link between Dambeck’s lectures and this textbook compels us to revise the current understanding of the nature of their ideas. Dambeck has so far been most often unproblematically presented as an adherent and disseminator of Kant’s and Schiller’s ideas about aesthetics in the Bohemian Lands. The key textbook on which he bases his university lecture series is, however, intentionally un-Kantian. Zschokke’s Ideen is part of the psychological-anthropological stream of Late-Enlightenment German aesthetics. (shrink)

This book, translated for the first time into English, presents the major statement of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. Here, in his most systematic work, Feuerbach’s thought on religion and on the philosophy of nature achieves its full maturity. Central to the thought of Feuerbach is the concept that man not God is the creator, that divinities are representations of man’s innermost feelings and ideas. Philosophy should turn from theology and speculative rationalism to sound factual anthropology. “My aim in (...) these Lectures,” writes Feuerbach, “is to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, worshippers into workers, candidates for the other world into students of this world, Christians, who on their own confession are half-animal and half-angel, into men––whole men.”. (shrink)

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, founded July 1, 1978, at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, was established by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner. Lectureships are awarded to outstanding scholars or leaders in broadly defined fields of human values and transcend ethnic, national, religious, or ideological distinctions. Volume 31 features lectures given during the academic year 2010–2011 at Yale University, The University of Utah, The University of Michigan, Stanford University, Princeton University, and Harvard University. _Contributors: (...) __Rebecca Goldstein, “The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature” _ Rebecca Goldstein is a research associate in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University, and an award-winning novelist. _Spike Lee, “America Through My Lens: The Evolving Nature of Race and Class in the Films of Spike Lee” _ Spike Lee, a writer-director, actor, producer, author, and educator who has revolutionized the role of black talent in cinema, is widely regarded as today’s premiere African-American filmmaker. _Susan Neiman, “Victims and Heroes”_ Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum, an international interdisciplinary think tank in Berlin, and is the author of three books. _Elinor Ostrom, “Frameworks” and “Analyzing 100-Year-Old Irrigation Puzzles”_ Elinor Ostrom is Distinguished Professor, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and senior research director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington. _Robert Putnam, “American Grace: Religious Americans Are Nicer and Happier. Why?”_ and “American Grace: Americans Are Religiously Devout and Religiously Divided, yet Religiously Tolerant. Why?” Robert Putnam is Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and has written more than a dozen books. _James Scott, “The Late Neolithic Multispecies Resettlement Camp” and “The Long Golden Age of Barbarians, a.k.a. Non-State Peoples”_ James Scott is the Sterling professor of Political Science and professor of Anthropology and director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. _Martin Seligman, “Flourish: Positive Psychology and Positive Interventions”_ Martin Seligman is Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Positive Psychology Center. He is the author of twenty-one books and more than 250 articles. _Susan Smith, “Moral Maze: Dealings in Debt” and “Ethical Investment?: Attending to Assets”_ Susan Smith, Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, researches the interdisciplinary world of housing studies. She has published more than 100 scholarly articles. (shrink)

Why these lectures? -- Hegel between the ancients and the moderns -- Divisions and topics in philosophy of subjective spirit -- Anthropology : slumbering spirit -- Animal magnetism and clairvoyance -- Dementia -- Phenomenology of spirit -- Reciprocal recognition, spirit, and the concept of right -- Recognition and self-actualization -- Psychology : theoretical spirit -- Spirit for itself : from the found to the posited -- Imagination, sign, memory -- Mechanical memory and transcendental deduction -- Psychology : practical (...) spirit : the synthesis of Kant and Aristotle -- The formalism of the psychology -- Unresolved issues : the unity of the philosophy of spirit -- Notes on the text and translation -- Introduction -- Anthropology -- Natural soul -- The dreaming soul -- Sentience -- Self-feeling -- Habit -- Actual soul -- Phenomenology of spirit -- Consciousness as such -- Self-consciousness -- Reason -- Psychology -- Theoretical spirit -- Intuition -- Representation -- Thought -- Practical spirit. (shrink)

This chapter describes Immanuel Kant's conception of anthropology and the most basic distinctions he draws when invoking faculties throughout the anthropology transcripts. It explains Kant's account of the objective senses (hearing, sight, and touch), and shows that the sensory material provided by these senses are empirical conditions of experience that supplement the a priori conditions articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason. The chapter also describes some of the central details of Kant's account of the imagination, focusing on (...) his distinction between wit and the power of judgment and on the law of association he endorses. It outlines Kant's account of both the deficiencies of the mind and the perfection of cognition. By showing how the transcendental faculties are manifested at the level of actual, concrete experience, the anthropology transcripts can help to illuminate Kant's understanding of the operations and functions of the human mind. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are (...) two broad approaches adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

Symbolic healing, that is, responding to meaningful experiences in positive ways, can facilitate human healing. This process partly engages consciousness and partly evades consciousness completely (sometimes it partakes of both simultaneously). This paper, presented as the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness Distinguished Lecture at the 2011 AAA meeting in Montreal, reviews recent research on what is ordinarily (and unfortunately) called the “placebo effect.” The author makes the argument that language use should change, and the relevant portions of what (...) is often called the placebo effect should be referred to as the “meaning response.”. (shrink)

Kant holds in his works on morality that prudence is not free, because only action under the moral law is free. He also holds that acting on prudent reasons is incompatible with the moral law. If one explores his lectures on anthropology, however, one has reason to believe that not only is prudent action free in some sense as freedom of choice, but it is also not incompatible with moral action, since it does not necessitate using other human (...) beings as mere means, even though it is about using other human beings as ends to one’s happiness. This article will show how Kant holds these positions in his lectures on anthropology. (shrink)

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. This trajectory of lectures tracks a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood. These are (...) aspects that were all of great significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition, the evolution of imagination, music and language, the evolution of morality, and the evolution of the religious disposition. (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)

This is the first in-depth study of a female audience that shows how and why women went to the theater in Restoration England. Robert challenges the assumption that a "ladies' faction" played an important part in encouraging the playhouses to present a more moral, less bawdy or "satirical" style of comedy, thus changing the course of English drama. He shows that there is no evidence of this faction, and that "sentimental" comedies really did cater to the interest of their female (...) audience by incorporating the fashionable concern for women's rights. Drawing on many sources, including the life of Elizabeth Pepys, the book investigates just who these "ladies" were, what determined their theater-going, how often they went, what they liked and did in the theater, and the role of patronage at the court of three Restoration queens. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring to light the anthropological dimension of Kant’s account of cognition as it is developed in the Lectures on Anthropology. I will argue that Kant’s anthropology of cognition develops along two complementary lines. On the one hand, it studies Nature’s intentions for the human species – the “natural” dimension of human cognition. On the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise of our cognitive purposes – the “pragmatic” (...) dimension of human cognition. Insofar as it is intended for us as embodied human agents whose cognition takes place in the empirical world, it is concerned with the knowledge of the natural subjective conditions that help or hinder our cognition. Yet the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic dimension turns out to be problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology is defined as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself’ (A 7:119), by contrast with acting, cognising seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action. However, I will show that Kant’s account of cognition makes room for a form of epistemic control that is sufficient to account for the possibility of its pragmatic dimension. Therefore, far from portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account not only acknowledges the empirical, contingent and messy features of our cognition, it helps us become better, more efficient knowers by recommending how we can improve upon the subjective features that further or hinder our cognitive perfection. I will conclude by drawing the implications on my interpretation for our overall understanding of Kant’s account of cognition. (shrink)

Among the many stages of Kant’s problem of a reciprocal collocation of the human knowledges, Encyclopedism, quite unsurprisingly, is one of the most relevant; and yet, quite surprisingly, it is Anthropology which plays here one of the lead parts, insofar as the complex ascertainment of its definition, its position, its task proves to be of irrefutable importance towards solving the greater problem at hand. The question arises as the association – or dissociation – between Empirical Psychology and Pragmatic (...) class='Hi'>Anthropology, and their inclusion in, or exclusion from, their greater or lesser relation with Metaphysics; a problem which, to the careless eye, seems to have been promoted by Kant himself. Here, opinions diverge as to the nature of the relation between the two sciences, from their total inter-dependence to their complete separation. We, in turn, propose a different approach. Our objective is to reenact Kant’s fundamental scheme of human knowledges, as presented not only in the only extant Lecture on Encyclopedism, but in various others dimensions of Kant’s academic activity; and here, to propose a contrasting analysis between Empirical Psychology and Pragmatic Anthropology; one, however, based not on the assumption of their consonance or dissonance through their characteristics, rather on their respective position and scope amid the field of human knowledges. As such, it is our intention to consider Kant’s Lectures in their interconnection, namely, in their apparently dubious simultaneous collocation of an Empirical Psychology as Anthropology; and, based on their specific position in the scheme of human knowledges, and what this position entails in terms of their scope and task, to ascertain to what extent Empirical Psychology is indeed Anthropology, and from what extent Empirical Psychology is no longer Anthropology – not, at least, Pragmatic Anthropology. In other words, we shall labor towards defining a dividing line in Kant’s scheme of human knowledges; one which for Kant represents a third dimension of knowledge and stands between rational and empirical, Metaphysics and the historical sciences; that line, in our view, being that of a cosmopolitical prism. Keywords: Kant, encyclopedism, anthropology, empirical psychology, cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Tant par son œuvre politique importante que par le potentiel créateur de son travail sur la perception, l'expression et l'ontologie, Maurice Merleau-Ponty a exercé une influence peu remarquée sur la pensée politique française. Aux lectures des Aron, Sartre et Lefort qui ont déterminé la compréhension et le sens politiques de l'œuvre de Merleau-Ponty s'ajoute une postérité immédiate chez ses contemporains. Colette Audry, Tran Duc Thao, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, et Frantz Fanon furent marqués par leur proximité à Merleau-Ponty tout autant que (...) par ses écrits, reprenant chacun à son propre compte son attitude. Une postérité silencieuse, quelque peu différée, se remarque chez Cornelius Castoriadis, Françoise Collin et Jean-François Lyotard, qui construisirent leurs pensées dans une rupture créative avec celle de Merleau-Ponty. Enfin, une postérité politique se fait sentir dans le moment qui nous est contemporain): Vincent Peillon, Marc Crépon et Luce Irigaray reviennent ici sur leur relation à sa philosophie et sur ce qu'elle permet de penser. À travers ces postérités, les contributrices et contributeurs de cet ouvrage se penchent sur les questions de l'engagement militant et philosophique, de la relationalité et de l'altérité, de la racisation et des émotions, du corps et de la parole, de la vie esthétique, de l'ontologie et la révolution, du républicanisme, du conflit et des épreuves historiques, ou encore du toucher et de la culture politique. (shrink)

In the fall semester of 1772/73 at the Albertus University of Königsberg, Immanuel Kant, metaphysician and professor of logic and metaphysics, began lectures on anthropology, which he continued until 1776, shortly before his retirement from public life. His lecture notes and papers were first published in 1798, eight years after the publication of the _Critique of Judgment, _the third of his famous _Critiques. _The present edition of the _Anthropology _is a translation of the text found in volume 7 (...) of _Kants gesammelte Schriften, _edited by Oswald Külpe. Kant describes the _Anthropology _as a systematic doctrine of the knowledge of humankind. Kant’s lectures stressed the "pragmatic" approach to the subject because he intended to establish pragmatic anthropology as a regular academic discipline. He differentiates the physiological knowledge of the human race—the investigation of "what Nature makes of man"—from the pragmatic—"what man as a free being makes of himself, what he can make of himself, and what he ought to make of himself." Kant believed that anthropology teaches the knowledge of humankind and makes us familiar with what is pragmatic, not speculative, in relation to humanity. He shows us as world citizens within the context of the cosmos. Summarizing the cloth edition of the _Anthropology, Library Journal _concludes: "Kant’s allusions to such issues as sensation, imagination, judgment, taste, emotion, passion, moral character, and the character of the human species in regard to the ideal of a cosmopolitan society make this work an important resource for English readers who seek to grasp the connections among Kant’s metaphysics of nature, metaphysics of morals, and political theory. The notes of the editor and translator, which incorporate material from Ernst Cassirer’s edition and from Kant’s _marginalia _in the original manuscript, shed considerable light on the text.". (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.

In the fall semester of 1772/73 at the Albertus University of Königsberg, Immanuel Kant, metaphysician and professor of logic and metaphysics, began lectures on anthropology, which he continued until 1776, shortly before his retirement from public life. His lecture notes and papers were first published in 1798, eight years after the publication of the _Critique of Judgment, _the third of his famous _Critiques. _The present edition of the _Anthropology _is a translation of the text found in volume 7 (...) of _Kants gesammelte Schriften, _edited by Oswald Külpe. Kant describes the _Anthropology _as a systematic doctrine of the knowledge of humankind. Kant’s lectures stressed the "pragmatic" approach to the subject because he intended to establish pragmatic anthropology as a regular academic discipline. He differentiates the physiological knowledge of the human race—the investigation of "what Nature makes of man"—from the pragmatic—"what man as a free being makes of himself, what he can make of himself, and what he ought to make of himself." Kant believed that anthropology teaches the knowledge of humankind and makes us familiar with what is pragmatic, not speculative, in relation to humanity. He shows us as world citizens within the context of the cosmos. Summarizing the cloth edition of the _Anthropology_,_ Library Journal_ concludes: "Kant’s allusions to such issues as sensation, imagination, judgment, taste, emotion, passion, moral character, and the character of the human species in regard to the ideal of a cosmopolitan society make this work an important resource for English readers who seek to grasp the connections among Kant’s metaphysics of nature, metaphysics of morals, and political theory. The notes of the editor and translator, which incorporate material from Ernst Cassirer’s edition and from Kant’s _marginalia _in the original manuscript, shed considerable light on the text.". (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)

How do human beings become human? This question lies behind the so-called human sciences. But these disciplines are scattered among many different departments and hold up a cracked mirror to humankind. This is why, in the view of Paul Ricoeur, we need to develop a philosophical anthropology, one that has a much older history but still offers many untapped resources. This appeal to a specifically philosophical approach to questions regarding what it was to be human did not stop Ricoeur (...) from entering into dialogue with other disciplines and approaches, such as psychoanalysis, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and the philosophy of language, in order to offer an up-to-date reflection on what he saw as the fundamental issues. For there is clearly not a simple, single answer to the question what is it to be human? Ricoeur therefore takes up the complexity of this question in terms of the tensions he sees between the voluntary and the involuntary, acting and suffering, autonomy and vulnerability, capacity and fragility, and identity and otherness. The texts brought together in this volume provide an overall view of the development of Ricoeurs philosophical thinking on the question of what it is to be human, from his early 1939 lecture on Attention to his remarks on receiving the Kluge Prize in 2004, a few months before his death. (shrink)

First, it is clearly a great honor to our society that Paul Rabinow has agreed to present the Coss Dialogue Lecture for 2012. His work in the field of what he has termed "the anthropology of the contemporary" has reached out to otherwise diverse traditions in anthropology and philosophy in order to incorporate their best elements into a novel approach to the logos of anthropos. His case-based studies have focused on the relations between the physical sciences and the (...) human sciences, and especially between the efforts of scientists working in the fields of synthetic biology and the efforts of those working in the fields of the human sciences who take it as their task to evaluate the ethical and other diagnostic .. (shrink)

This chapter deals with Immanuel Kant's remarks on touch and vision in the context of his pragmatic anthropology, by considering his views of the scope, aims, and methods of that fledgling discipline. Kant supports his discussion with appeals to observation and experience that form a kind of everyday phenomenology of sensory experience. The chapter considers Kant's notion of the relation between the pragmatic and the theoretical, including his remarks that a pragmatic anthropology does not present theoretical or scholastic (...) knowledge but focuses on worldly knowledge. Kant derived the framework for his discussion of the five external senses from his lectures on metaphysics, especially those on empirical psychology. In both empirical psychology and anthropology he categorizes the senses into those that are comparatively objective and those that are comparatively subjective: the objective senses provide more cognition, and provide occasion for reflection, but the subjective senses have more sensation than reflection. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer The materials translated in the body of this volume date from 1927 through 1931. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article and the Amsterdam Lectures were written by Edmund Hussed (with a short contribution by Martin Heideg ger) between September 1927 and April 1928, and Hussed's marginal notes to Sein und Zeit and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik were made between 1927 and 1929. The appendices to this volume contain texts from both Hussed and Heidegger, (...) and date from 1929 through 1931. As a whole these materials not only document Hussed's thinking as he approached retirement and emeri tus status (March 31, 1928) but also shed light on the philosophical chasm that was widening at that time between Hussed and his then colleague and protege, Martin Heidegger. 1. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article Between September and early December 1927, Hussed, under contract, composed an introduction to phenomenology that was to be published in the fourteenth edition ofthe Encyclopaedia Britannica (1929). Hussed's text went through four versions (which we call Drafts A, B, C, and D) and two editorial condensations by other hands (which we call Drafts E and F). Throughout this volume those five texts as a whole are referred to as "the EB Article" or simply "the Article. " Hussed's own final version of the Article, Draft D, was never published of it appeared only in 1962. (shrink)