After reviewing Kant’s well-known criticisms of the traditional proofs of God’s existence and his preferred moral argument, this paper presents a detailedanalysis of a densely-packed theistic argument in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Humanity’s ultimate moral destiny can be fulfilled only through organized religion, for only by participating in a religious community can we overcome the evil in human nature. Yet we cannot conceive how such a community can even be founded without presupposing God’s existence. Viewing God as (...) the internal moral lawgiver, empowering a community of believers, is Kant’s ultimate rationale for theistic belief. (shrink)

Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower (...) believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith. (shrink)

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof ” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant’s stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have atranscendental form (called quasi-transcendental (...) because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof. (shrink)

A Chinese translation of an essay entitled "Paradox in Perspective: A Liar’s Guide to Humor".

After summarizing the content of my book, Kant and Mysticism, I warn against four preliminary misconceptions. The book never argues that Kant viewed himself as a mystic, fully acknowledges Kant’s negative view of mysticism, offers no comprehensive overview of mystical traditions, and aims to initiate a dialogue, not to have the final word. I then respond to the foregoing essays by the five critics.

While earlier work has emphasized Kant’s philosophy of religion as thinly disguised morality, this timely and original reappraisal of Kant’s philosophy of religion incorporates recent scholarship. In this volume, Chris L. Firestone, Stephen R. Palmquist, and the other contributors make a strong case for more specific focus on religious topics in the Kantian corpus. Main themes include the relationship between Kant’s philosophy of religion and his philosophy as a whole, the contemporary relevance of specific issues arising out of Kant’s philosophical (...) theology, and the relationship of Kant’s philosophy to Christian theology. As a whole, this book capitalizes on contemporary movements in Kant studies by looking at Kant not as an anti-metaphysician, but as a genuine seeker of spirituality in the human experience. (shrink)

Kants theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. It is argued that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to a personconvictionberzeugung (). This is confirmed by a detailed analysis of the 169 occurrences of Gesinnung and cognate words in Religion. It contrasts with what is suggested by translating Gesinnung as, which reinforces a tendency to interpret the notion more metaphysically, and also with Pluharattitude’, which has too strongly psychological connotations.

Although significant differences undoubtedly exist between Daoism and Kant’s philosophy, the two systems also have some noteworthy similarities. After calling attention to a few such parallels and sketching the outlines of Kant’s philosophy of religion, this article focuses on an often-neglected feature of the latter: the four guiding principles of what Kant calls an “invisible church”. Numerous passages from Lao Zi’s classic text, Dao-De-Jing, seem to uphold these same principles, thus suggesting that they can also be interpreted as core features (...) of a Daoist philosophy of life. A crucial difference, however, is that members of a Daoist church would focus on contentment, whereas Kantian churches modeled on Christianity would strive for perfection. The article therefore concludes by considering what a synthesis might look like, if a Kantian church were to be based on a Daoist interpretation of these four fundamental principles. (shrink)

After summarizing the content of Philip Rossi’s book, The Ethical Commonwealth in History: Peace-Making as the Moral Vocation of Humanity, I pose two main questions. First, does politics or religion play a more important role in Kant’s philosophy when it comes to the task of ushering humanity to the realization of its ultimate vocation, the establishment of a lasting peace for human society? I argue that Kant portrays politics as a means to a religious end, whereas Rossi tends to reverse (...) their Kantian order of priority. Second, what concrete details does Kant give in defense of his theory that establishing an ethical community is a universal duty of humankind? As Rossi tends to overlook Kant’s details, I provide an overview. Kant argues that the ethical community can only be established in the form of a church and that the rational content constituting the core of the true church consists of four requirements: universality, integrity, freedom, and unchangeableness. After challenging Rossi’s claim that Kantian hope is necessarily social, I conclude with two minor questions: Is Kant’s theory of human nature dualist or monist? and Must the church create a political form of peace that applies to all human beings? (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

After reviewing the history of the “affirmative” approach to interpreting Kant’s Religion, I offer four responses to the symposium papers in the previous issue of Faith and Philosophy. First, incorrectly identifying Kant’s two “experiments” leads to misunderstandings of his affirmation of Christianity. Second, Kant’s Critical Religion expounds a thoroughgoing interpretation of these experiments, and was not primarily an attempt to confirm the architectonic introduced in Kant’s System of Perspectives. Third, the surprise positions defended by most symposium contributors render the “affirmative” (...) label virtually meaningless. Finally, if Kant is read as constructing perspectival philosophy, not theology, the compatibility of his positions with Christianity stands. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of religion has often been portrayed as leaving no room for grace. Even recent interpreters seeking to affirm Kantian religion find his appeal to grace unconvincing, because they assume the relevant section of Religion (Second Piece, Section One, Subsection C) is an attempt to construct a theology of divine assistance. Yet Kant’s goal in attempting to solve the three "difficulties" with belief in grace is to defend an ethics of grace – i.e., an account of how someone can (...) believe in grace without succumbing to the tendency to become morally lazy. After introducing the three difficulties and offering a perspectival interpretation of how Kant intends to solve each one, this paper interprets Kant’s phenomenon-noumenon distinction in a way that clarifies how his solutions to these difficulties all focus on the believer’s ethical state, not on transcendent theological constructions. (shrink)

Throughout history no mere mortal has been more revered and esteemed by so many diverse people than Abraham, great patriarch of the three enduring monotheistic religions. Yet Judaism, Christianity and Islam all agree that this man attempted to kill his own, innocent son, an act so dastardly that it would normally be judged both immoral and illegal in any civil society. Surprisingly, the scriptures of these three religious faiths praise Abraham for this very act, justifying it in very different ways, (...) but all portraying it as the paradigm of religious obedience. (shrink)

Quantum indeterminism seems incompatible with Kant’s defense of causality in his Second Analogy. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This article argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to the world as observable, not to hypothetical objects such as quarks, detectable only by high energy accelerators. Taking Planck’s constant and the speed of light as the lower and upper bounds of observability provides a way of interpreting the observables of quantum mechanics as (...) empirically real even though they are transcendentally ideal.El indeterminismo cuántico parece incompatible con la defensa de la causalidad que hace Kant en su Segunda Analogía. La interpretación de Copenhague de la mecánica cuántica también considera a esta teoría como evidencia a favor del antirrealismo. Este artículo defiende que la ley de la causalidadse aplica solamente al mundo en tanto que observable, y no a objetos hipotéticos como los quarks, detectables solo mediante aceleradores de altas energías. Tomar la constante de Planck y la velocidad de la luz como límites inferior y superior de la observabilidad nos ofrece un modo de interpretar losobservables de la mecánica cuántica como empíricamente reales, incluso aunque estos sean trascendentalmente, es decir, preobservacionalmente, ideales. (shrink)

Kant is often regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern liberal democracy. His political theory reaches its climax in the ground-breaking work, Perpetual Peace (1795), which sets out the basic framework for a world federation of states united by a system of international law. What is less well known is that two years earlier, in his Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793/1794), Kant had postulated a very different, explicitly religious path to the politics of peace: he (...) presents the idea of an “ethical community” as a necessary requirement for humanity to become “satisfactory to God”. While many recent scholars have noted the importance of Kant’s concept of the ethical community, few recognize the force of his argument that such a community is possible only if it takes the form of a church; as a result, the precise status of his proposal remains unclear and under-appreciated. He argues in Division One, Section IV, of Religion’s Third Piece that the idea of this community can become a reality only through a “church” that is characterized by four rational requirements: unity, integrity, freedom, and the changeability of all church rules except these four unchangeable marks. Prior to Section IV, Division One portrays this ethical community as having a political form, yet an essentially nonpolitical matter. He compares it with Jewish theocracy, but observes that the latter failed to be an ethical commonwealth because it was explicitly political. Whereas traditional theocracy replaces the political state of nature (which conforms to the law, “might makes right”) with an ethical state of nature (which conforms to the law that I call, “should makes good”), or attempts to synthesize them, non-coercive theocracy transcends this distinction through a new perspective: it unites humanity in a common vision of a divine legislator whose only law is inward, binding church members together like families, through the law of love. Whereas the legal rights supported by democracy and a system of international law can go a long way to prepare for world peace, Kant’s conviction is that it will be ultimately impossible without support from healthy religion. (shrink)

This is a series of two articles examining Kant’s attitude toward mystical experiences and the relation between his interest in these and his interest in constructing a Critical system of metaphysics.“The Critical Dreams” begins by questioning the traditional division between “Critical” and “pre-Critical” periods in Kant’s development. After explaining Kant’s Critical method, his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer... is examined and found to contain all the essential elements of that method. The onlykey element which is missing is his “Copernican” (...) insight. Although Hume may have played an important role in the early 1760’s in awakening Kant to the importance of his Critical method, this Copernican insight seems to have its roots more in Swedenborg than in Hume. Moreover, [DREAMS] itself should no longer be interpreted as evincing a sceptical or empirical stage in Kant’s development, but can now be seen as setting for Kant the problem which his Critical System was intended to solve. [DREAMS] suggests the two strands of this problem: How is mystical experience possible? and How is metaphysics possible? [DREAMS] offers a Critical answer to the first question, but does not fully develop its implications. (shrink)

Kant’s enigmatic term, “Gesinnung”, baffles many readers of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of Gesinnung, covering all 169 occurrences of cognate words in Religion, clarifies its role in his theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. Whereas the convention of translating “Gesinnung” as “disposition” reinforces a tendency to interpret key Kantian theories metaphysically, and Pluhar’s translation as “attitude” has psychological connotations, this study demonstrates that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to (...) a person’s principle-based choice to live a certain way. Interpreted as principled “conviction”, Kantian Gesinnung is a religiously-manifested, moral form of Überzeugung (“convincing”). (shrink)

Quantum indeterminism seems incompatible with Kant’s defense of causality in his Second Analogy. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This first article of a two-part series argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to the world as observable, not to hypothetical objects such as quarks, detectable only by high energy accelerators. Taking Planck’s constant and the speed of light as the lower and upper bounds of observability provides a way of interpreting the (...) observables of quantum mechanics as empirically real even though they are transcendentally ideal. (shrink)

There is a common assumption among philosophers, shared even by many Kant scholars, that Kant had a naive faith in the absolute valid­ity of Euclidean geometry, Aristotelian logic, and Newtonian physics, and that his primary goal in the Critique of Pure Reason was to pro­vide a rational foundation upon which these classical scientific theories could be based. This, it might be thought, is the essence of his attempt to solve the problem which, as he says in a footnote to the (...) second edition Preface, "still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general" -namely, "that the existence of things outside us...must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to.. (shrink)

This paper is, in part, a report on the conclusions reached at a retreat on Part One of Kant's Conflict of the Faculties, held at the Center for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education, and Renewal, in Mendocino, California. It argues that Kant's distinction between the public and private spheres does not remove but intensifies the philosopher's duty to influence the general public. I conclude with some reflections on how a Kantian philosopher might have a positive influence on religious communities. Includes (...) an appendix coauthored by Richard W. Mapplebeckpalmer. (shrink)

This article begins with an overview of the fourfold epistemological framework that arises out of Kant’s distinctions between analyticity and syntheticity and between apriority and aposteriority. I challenge Kant’s claim that the fourth classification, analytic aposteriority, is empty. In reviewing three articles written during the third quarter of the twentieth century that also defend analytic aposteriority, I identify promising insights suggested by Benardete (1958). I then present overviews of two 1987 articles wherein I defend analytic aposteriority, first as a classification (...) highlighting the epistemological status of several crucial (and easily misunderstood) features of Kant’s own philosophy, and second as a way of expressing some of Kripke’s claims about naming in more authentically Kantian terminology. The paper concludes with suggestions of several other important philosophical developments that also make advances precisely insofar as they expound the nature and implications of the epistemological classification that Kant assumed to be empty. (shrink)

After coining the term “philopsychy” to describe a “soul-loving” approach to philosophical practice, especially when it welcomes a creative synthesis of philosophy and psychology, this article identifies a system of geometrical figures (or “maps”) that can be used to stimulate reflection on various types of perspectival differences. The maps are part of the author’s previously established mapping methodology, known as the Geometry of Logic. As an illustration of how philosophy can influence the development of psychology, Immanuel Kant’s table of twelve (...) categories and Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types are shown to share a common logical structure. Just as Kant proposes four basic categories, each expressed in terms of three subordinate categories, Jung proposes four basic personality functions, each having three possible manifestations. The concluding section presents four scenarios illustrating how such maps can be used in philosophical counseling sessions to stimulate philopsychic insight. (shrink)

This is a thoroughly revised version of a paper that I originally presented at the "Kant in Asia" international conference on "The Unity of Human Personhood, held in Hong Kong in May of 2009. After explaining what Kant means by his "architectonic" form of reasoning, I argue that the Yijing (the Chinese "Book of Changes") exhibits the same type of reasoning. I contrast two uses of architectonic reasoning: divining the truth vs. divination. The article concludes with an illustration of how (...) the Yijing might be used as a guidebook for obtaining wisdom. (shrink)

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously includes immortality as one of the three “ideas” that give rise to “unavoidable problems of reason” (KrV, B7)1 and thereby constitute the basic subject-matter of metaphysics. Interpreters have paid a great deal of attention to the other two ideas, God and freedom; yet very few studies of Kantian immortality have ever been undertaken. This should come as no surprise, once we realize that Kant himself used the word “immortality” and its cognates only (...) 40 times in all three of his great Critiques. (By comparison, forms of the words “God” and “free(dom)” appear 119 and 509 times, respectively, in the three Critiques.) Kant’s theory of immortality – if he can be said to have one – is therefore exceedingly difficult to understand. For example, he says at one point (KrV, B395n): “Metaphysics has only three ideas as the proper purpose of its investigation: God, freedom, and immortality – and in such a way that the second concept, when combined with the first, is to lead to the third as a necessary conclusion.” How are we to understand this claim ? Does Kant really mean that combining the concept of freedom with the concept of God somehow gives rise to immortality as a necessary inference? In any case, why does Kant say so little about immortality, even though he portrays it as one of three ideas that constitute the “final aim” of all metaphysical speculation ? These and other puzzles raised by Kant’s occasional comments on immortality will be the focus of this paper. (shrink)

Given his emphasis on deontological ethics, Kant is rarely regarded as a friend of prudence. For example, he is often interpreted as an opponent of so-called “historical faiths”. What typically goes unnoticed is that in explaining the legitimate role of historical faiths in the moral development of the human race, Kant appeals explicitly to their prudential status. A careful examination of Kant’s main references to prudence demonstrates that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its (...) limitations and its real value. The wise person adopts some form of historical faith, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life virtually impossible for embodied beings to achieve. (shrink)

Given his emphasis on deontological ethics, Kant is rarely regarded as a friend of prudence. For example, he is often interpreted as an opponent of so-called “historical faiths”. What typically goes unnoticed is that in explaining the legitimate role of historical faiths in the moral development of the human race, Kant appeals explicitly to their prudential status. A careful examination of Kant’s main references to prudence demonstrates that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its (...) limitations and its real value. The wise person adopts some form of historical faith, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life virtually impossible for embodied beings to achieve. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of articles that correlates Kant's architectonic with the Yijing's sixty-four hexagrams. Previous articles explained “architectonic” reasoning, introduced four levels of the “Compound Yijing,” consisting of 0 + 4 + 12 + gua, and suggested correlating the fourth level's four sets of twelve to the four “faculties” in Kant's model of the university. This third paper examines the philosophy faculty, assessing whether the twelve proposed gua meaningfully correlate with twelve basic philosophical concepts that Kant (...) introduces in his three Critiques. A key difference emerges: Kant's architectonic method aims to produce synthetic a priori knowledge, while the Yijing's architectonic method aims to produce analytic a posteriori belief. (shrink)

This paper is, in part, a report on the conclusions reached at a retreat on Part One of Kant's Conflict of the Faculties, held at the Center for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education, and Renewal, in Mendocino, California. It argues that Kant's distinction between the public and private spheres does not remove but intensifies the philosopher's duty to influence the general public. I conclude with some reflections on how a Kantian philosopher might have a positive influence on religious communities. Includes (...) an appendix coauthored by Richard W. Mapplebeckpalmer. (shrink)

This is the second of a series of two articles examining Kant’s attitude toward mystical experiences and the relation between his interest in these and his interest in constructing a Critical System of metaphysics.“The Critical Mysticism” explores the extent to which Kant’s writings prior to his Opus Postumum contain a more developed theory of mystical experience. Traditionally Kant has been regarded as against all brands of mysticism. This arises partly from his narrow use of “mystical,” but primarily from a misunderstanding (...) by commentators of his statements concerning the possibility of supersensible experience. The latter misunderstanding can be easily corrected by clearly distinguishing between “immediate experience” and experience in Kant’s technical sense of “empirical knowledge.” Kant never denies the possibility of an immediate ex-perience of supersensible reality, but only the supposition that such experiences can establish empirical knowledge. The character of his Critical mysticism can be discerned, even without examining Kant’s Opus Postumum. For on numerous occasions he explains the two respects in which an immediate supersensible experience is not only acceptable, but supports and is supported by his Critical System. The mysteries of nature and the moral law provide the two sides of Kant’s mystical coin, both in theory and in the discipline of his own life. (shrink)

Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower (...) believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith. (shrink)

Click on the link provided to access a word-searchable, prepublication version of this paper. Click on the "download" option to see a non-searchable offprint of the published version. Also, see elsewhere on this website for the longer, unabridged version and for several translations of this shorter version into other languages.

In a recent article in this journal [Phil. Math., II, v.4 (1989), n.2, pp.?- ?] J. Fang argues that we must not be fooled by A.J. Ayer (God rest his soul!) and his cohorts into believing that mathematical knowledge has an analytic a priori status. Even computers, he reminds us, take some amount of time to perform their calculations. The simplicity of Kant's infamous example of a mathematical proposition (7+5=12) is "partly to blame" for "mislead[ing] scholars in the direction of (...) neglecting the temporal element"; yet a brief instant of time is required to grasp even this simple truth. If Kant were alive today, "and if he had had a little more mathematical savvy", Fang explains, he could have used the latest example of the largest prime number (391,581 x 2 216,193 - 1) as a better example of the "synthetic a priori" character of mathematics. The reason Fang is so intent upon emphasizing the temporal character of mathematics is that he wishes to avoid "the uncritical mixing of ... a theology and a philosophy of mathematics." For "in the light of the Computer Age today: finitism is king!" Although Kant's aim was explicitly "to study the 'human' ... faculty", Fang claims that even he did not adequatley emphasize "the clearly and concretely distinguishable line of demarcation between the human and divine faculties.". (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal Phil. Math., II, v.4 (1989), n.2, pp.? ?] J. Fang argues that we must not be fooled by A.J. Ayer (God rest his soul!) and his cohorts into believing that mathematical knowledge has an analytic a priori status. Even computers, he reminds us, take some amount of time to perform their calculations. The simplicity of Kant's infamous example of a mathematical proposition (7+5=12) is "partly to blame" for "mislead[ing] scholars in the direction of (...) neglecting the temporal element"; yet a brief instant of time is required to grasp even this simple truth. If Kant were alive today, "and if he had had a little more mathematical savvy", Fang explains, he could have used the latest example of the largest prime number (391,581 x 2 216,193 - 1) as a better example of the "synthetic a priori" character of mathematics. The reason Fang is so intent upon emphasizing the temporal character of mathematics is that he wishes to avoid "the uncritical mixing of ... a theology and a philosophy of mathematics." For "in the light of the Computer Age today: finitism is king!" Although Kant's aim was explicitly "to study the 'human' ... faculty", Fang claims that even he did not adequatley emphasize "the clearly and concretely distinguishable line of demarcation between the human and divine faculties.". (shrink)

Chinese translation of a revised version of a conference paper originally entitled "Kant on the Prudential Status of Historical Faith". Here is the original abstract in English: Because his ethical theory is grounded on the assumption that actions are virtuous only to the extent that they are motivated by the moral law, Kant has rarely, if ever, been regarded as a friend of prudence. That he is also not an enemy of prudence has been demonstrated by several recent studies of (...) Kant’s moral philosophy. What has heretofore gone unnoticed, however, is that in explaining the genuine (and possibly indispensable) role played by empirical religious traditions, Kant appeals explicitly to the prudential status of what he calls “historical faith”. This paper will carefully examine Kant’s references to prudence in his book, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, demonstrating that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its limitations (as no more than the vehicle of true religion, not the moral core) and its real value. The wise person will be religious, in one form or another, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life extremely difficult, if not impossible, for embodied beings to achieve. (shrink)

Korean translation of "Kant's Critical Hermeneutic of Prayer".

Environmental eco-centrism, the claim that all members of the biosphere are ontologically and axiologically equal, presents a challenge to traditional ethical conceptions of the special status of humanity. Confucian and Kantian ethics approach this topic, and its application to other animals, in different ways: Confucianism employs stories that promote insight into the importance of sincerity and compassion to all animals, including non-human ones; Kant employs abstract reasoning to argue that non-human animals deserve respect because we humans share their basic nature. (...) We argue that, taken together, these two approaches preserve what is most important in eco-centrism, but without sacrificing human dignity in the process. (shrink)

After tracing the historical origin of philosophy cafés, as part of the worldwide philosophical practice movement, this article explains how the Hong Kong Philosophy Café was founded and describes a typical meeting. During its first year of existence, an Executive Committee was formed, which oversaw the setting up of eight different branches over the next ten years. Following sections that describe the work of the Executive Committee and the distinctive features of eight different branches, the article concludes with a summary (...) of the current situation and reflections on how recent developments in social media are likely to affect the way such public meetings are organized, as well as their continued impact on the social and political engagement of Hong Kong citizens. An appendix provides the complete text of the Constitution that was approved by the Hong Kong Philosophy Café’s Executive Committee. (shrink)

This book announces a new academic discipline, the “cognitive science of mathematics” (p. XI), by demonstrating how an empirical examination of the ideas underlying our use of mathematical symbols and calculations must employ metaphors grounded in the “embodied mind.” The authors ruthlessly attack what they dub “The Romance of Mathematics” (p. XV), their metaphor for any approach that treats mathematics as grounded in an abstract, disembodied yet objective reality that mysteriously provides the essential structure to the natural, human world.

This book review, published in Kant Studien 108.3 (Sept. 2017), pp.467-471, summarizes and assesses Lawrence R. Pasternack's book, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: An Interpretation and Defense (London and New York: Routledge, 2014).

This is a Belarusian translation of an essay interpreting the much-neglected Second Part of Kant's book, Conflict of the Faculties, entitled “An old question raised again: Is the human race constantly progressing?”, by showing the close relationship between the themes it deals with and those Kant addresses in the Supplements and Appendices of Perpetual Peace. In both works, Kant portrays the philosopher as having the duty to promote a “secret article”, without which his vision of a lasting international peace through (...) the agency of a federation of states is bound to fail. Both works identify this article as involving the necessity of publicity as a transcendental condition for peace, and call for philosophers to engage politicians and lawyers in a creative attitude towards lawmaking. Kant’s visionary program has failed to reach its goal up to now, not because it is too idealistic, but because philosophers have failed to take up the challenge. (shrink)