The Unity of Reason is the first major study of Kant's account of reason. It argues that Kant's wide-ranging interests and goals can only be understood by redirecting attention from epistemological questions of his work to those concerning the nature of reason. Rather than accepting a notion of reason given by his predecessors, a fundamental aim of Kant's philosophy is to reconceive the nature of reason. This enables us to understand Kant's insistence on the (...) unity of theoretical and practical reason as well as his claim that his metaphysics was driven by practical and political ends. Neiman begins by discussing the historical roots of Kant's conception of reason, and by showing Kant's solution to problems which earlier conceptions left unresolved. Kant's notion of reason itself is examined through a discussion of all the activities Kant attributes to reason. In separate chapters discussing the role of reason in science, morality, religion, and philosophy, Neiman explores Kant's distinctions between reason and knowledge, and his difficult account of the regulative principles of reason. Through examination of these principles in Kant's major and minor writings, The Unity of Reason provides a fundamentally new perspective on Kant's entire work. (shrink)

In this paper, I advance a new interpretation of the argumentative structure of the third Critique, which in turn clarifies the connection between its two apparently unrelated parts. I propose to read the third Critique as a response to Kant’s question of hope, which concerns the satisfaction of reason’s practical and theoretical interests. On this proposal, while the first part on aesthetics describes what we—as possessors of theoretical reason – may hope for, the second part, on teleology, describes (...) what we – as possessors of practical reason – may hope for. The main question of the third Critique is, ‘What may we hope if we act as we should, i.e. act rationally?’ Kant’s implicit answer is, ‘to attain the ideals of reason, which leads to happiness as a consequence of it.’ This novel reconstruction of the argumentative structure of the third Critique contributes to the literature by (i) explaining how the two parts of the third Critique on aesthetics and teleology are connected, (ii) clarifying how the ideals of reason are connected to hope and happiness, and (iii) showing how the spheres of nature and freedom can be synthetically unified through the faculty of judgment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I advance a new interpretation of the argumentative structure of the third Critique, which in turn clarifies the connection between its two apparently unrelated parts. I propose to read the third Critique as a response to Kant’s question of hope, which concerns the satisfaction of reason’s practical and theoretical interests. On this proposal, while the first part on aesthetics describes what we—as possessors of theoretical reason – may hope for, the second part, on teleology, (...) describes what we – as possessors of practical reason – may hope for. The main question of the third Critique is, ‘What may we hope if we act as we should, i.e. act rationally?’ Kant’s implicit answer is, ‘to attain the ideals of reason, which leads to happiness as a consequence of it.’ This novel reconstruction of the argumentative structure of the third Critique contributes to the literature by (i) explaining how the two parts of the third Critique on aesthetics and teleology are connected, (ii) clarifying how the ideals of reason are connected to hope and happiness, and (iii) showing how the spheres of nature and freedom can be synthetically unified through the faculty of judgment. (shrink)

Cases of reasonable, mistaken belief figure prominently in discussions of the knowledge norm of assertion and practical reason as putative counterexamples to these norms. These cases are supposed to show that the knowledge norm is too demanding and that some weaker norm ought to put in its place. These cases don't show what they're intended to. When you assert something false or treat some falsehood as if it's a reason for action, you might deserve an excuse. You often (...) don't deserve even that. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is that Kant employs a single conception of reason throughout his analysis of the fundamental principles of natural science, morality and politics, rational religion, and the practice of philosophy itself, and that this conception is that reason is the source of the ultimate goals or ideals for our conduct of both inquiry and action, but never a faculty that yields cognition of objects that exist independently of us, whether sensible or supersensible. In Neiman’s (...) words, “The basis of Kant’s reconception” of reason “is the denial that the rational is, or is centrally concerned with, the cognitive”, and the heart of his thesis of the unity of reason is his view that “the regulative principles of reason... shape our actions in science, morality, religion and philosophy itself”. Neiman’s work is refreshingly ambitious in its attempt to demonstrate that these generalities hold for all four of the areas she lists, but the general claims themselves will not come as a surprise to contemporary students of Kant. So for the work to succeed, it would have to break new ground in either the detailed analysis of the regulative functions of reason or in our understanding of reason’s general function in unifying the several branches of philosophy as Kant understands it. In my view, the book does neither. Neiman offers some interesting insights about Kant’s treatment of science, morality, and religion, but does not offer a rigorous analysis of the structure of Kant’s thought in any of these areas that goes beyond what many others have already provided. More importantly, she misses the opportunity to make a major advance in our understanding of the general structure of Kant’s thought. For what she describes is really similarities in our use of reason in the various areas of our inquiry and conduct; she does not show how Kant uses his conception of reason to unify the apparently disparate realms of theory and practice, or, in his terms, of nature and freedom. This task dominates the Critique of Judgment, where, far from merely recapitulating his previous accounts of the regulative use of reason in both science and morality, Kant argues as he never did before that we must be able to see the realms of nature and freedom not merely as compatible but as unified, yet also makes explicit the regulative status of reason and of this vision of unity precisely by stating his theory of the unity of reason as the culmination of a theory of reflective judgment. Neiman largely ignores Kant’s own most mature account of the unity of reason. (shrink)

In this collection comprising four of his most influential essays, Henrich proves himself unique in the conjunction of philosophical acumen, insight, and originality that he brings to Kant interpretation.

Proceeding along lines laid out in Kant’s Critiques, this essay gradually homes in on one way of understanding what the ultimate unity of pure reason might consist in. On this model, (i) pure reason, as such, is the power to originate and instate pure organizing forms—including, originally and preeminently, a self-legislated ultimate aim of complete (unmitigated, absolute) rational ordering—but (ii) this originally undifferentiated commitment to the untrammeled implementation of self-originated ordering forms is contingently confronted and qualified by (...) empirical givens that belong to two importantly distinct sorts (roughly: the sensory and the affective), and (iii) it is this duality in the given, arational phenomena that accounts for reason’s resulting ‘double specialization’ in theoretical explanation and practical orientation. Thus there is really only a single pure reason, with a single pure-rational project, but it has what can appear to be two distinct manifestations and implementations, as the result of the basic qualitative duality in the arational phenomena with which it is contingently confronted and which it has always already appointed itself to organize aright. I argue that this conception of the ultimate unity of reason (i) is importantly underwritten by Kant’s Critiques—although not of course entailed by them, let alone explicitly articulated in them, and (ii) is key to Fichte’s post-Kantian theory of subjectivity, as a largely implicit but systematically central commitment. (shrink)

There are at least two basic normative notions: rationality and reasons. The dominant normative account of reasons nowadays, which I call primitive pluralism about reasons, holds that some reasons are normatively basic and there is no underlying normative explanation of them in terms of other normative notions. Kantian constructivism about reasons, understood as a normative rather than a metaethical view, holds that rationality is the primitive normative notion that picks out which non-normative facts are reasons for what and explains why (...) those normative relations hold. By supposing that there is a plurality of primitive reasons, I argue that primitive pluralism about reasons lacks sufficient normative unity and structure. But Kantian constructivism about reasons faces a dilemma of its own: Either a conception of rationality is thick enough to capture the reasons of commonsense, in which case it cannot play the explanatory role assigned to it, or a conception of rationality is genuinely explanatory, in which case it is too thin to generate the reasons we recognize in commonsense. The aim of this paper is to suggest that if Kantian constructivism about reasons were built on a substantive, rather than merely formal, conception of rationality then it would stand a better chance at unifying the particular reasons we would endorse on due reflection. The groundwork I lay in this paper, I explain, is an essential first step in the larger project of developing a version of Kantian constructivism about reasons that might eventually explain all reasons in terms of rationality. (shrink)

The ‘unity of reason’ is mentioned at several points in Kant's writings, but it is never systematically discussed or explained in any detail. Occasionally, this ‘unity’ seems something that we can take for granted. At other times, it appears to be a thesis that has just been implicitly established. However, for the most part it is presented as an extremely ambitious, all-encompassing research project that Kant feels he has to postpone until some indefinite time in the future. (...) This chapter tries to disentangle these different ‘unities’ of reason, arguing that Kant was primarily concerned with the unity of the final philosophical system that reason as a unitary faculty seeks to produce, whereas the unity of reason in the sense of a unitary faculty of reason is taken for granted. The chapter focuses on some philosophically important features of Kant's critical theory of reason, reasoning and reasons in the two spheres. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the foremost Kant scholars of our time is a welcome and timely addition to the literature. Henrich is a very prolific scholar, and the lack of English translations of most of his works may account in some measure for the fact that there has been surprisingly little sustained engagement with them by Anglo-American scholars, especially those working on Kant’s ethics. It is to be hoped that this volume will help provoke such an engagement.

Understanding provides one form of unity in our experience—let us say, at least for the sake of illustration, that form of unity constituted by the capacity to assign any given experiences a uniquely determined place relative to any other given experiences in the ideal chronology of our experience as a whole. But the unity of experience does not, as Kant sees things, exhaust the forms of unity among our representations which we must seek. In addition to (...) the unity of experience sought by understanding, Kant suggests, the faculty of reason aims at “the unity of reason”. But what might Kant mean by the unity of reason? Two ways to interpret this phrase readily come to mind. First, we might take it to imply that reason has a single domain of application: there is only one species of pure reason. Second, we might take it to connote the uniqueness of the way in which pure reason functions or the product it aims to yield: pure reason aims to introduce a single special sort of unity into whatever it is to which it is appropriately applied. (shrink)

306 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL ~996 exposition of Siris but also in the way he is able to tie it thematically to the earlier periods of Berkeley's life. Much of the content of this book has already appeared in articles published by Berman within the past twenty-odd years. Yet, since some this material resides in journals difficult of access without an excellent library, the volume is a welcome addi- tion to the Berkeley literature. In the enormous (...) wake of his mentor, A. A. Luce, Berman has carefully and skillfully plotted his own course, presenting us with a bal- anced and compelling account of Ireland's greatest philosopher, one in which the man is a more sympathetic and fallible figure that that presented in either Luce's portrait of the "good bishop"--"the man with vision but in no sense a visionary" --or Yeats's sketch of a darker and more devious character. While Berman's Berkeley is one who "united the incompatible virtues of worldly wisdom and childlike inno- cence," and had "a delicate sense of what was required if the world was to be changed" , Berman does not hesitate to examine Berkeley "at his worst: in his biblical endorsement of slavery; his approval of kidnapping for the sake of converting the American Indians; in his theological rejection of all rebellion, no matter how tyrannical the ruler; [and] in his intolerant attitude to free-thinkers" . Even for those who will be dissatisfied with.. (shrink)

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant’s conception of reason and its philosophical significance, focusing on two claims. First, it argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or “comprehension”). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, through it, (...) we see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason also reads Kant as presenting us with a compelling picture of the role that reason (as a capacity or power) should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats as fundamental neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality, but instead a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity — namely, the capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of “rational constitutivism” – one which contrasts both with the forms of “reasons fundamentalism” that are currently fashionable and the forms of “agency-first constitutivism” that have dominated much of Kantian metaethics. In this sense, the aim of the book is to vindicate Kant’s insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason’s implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness. (shrink)

Kant and the Unity of Reason is a comprehensive reconstruction and a detailed analysis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. In the light of the third Critique, the book offers a final inter­pretation of the critical project as a whole. It proposes a new reading of Kant's notion of human experience in which domains, as different as knowledge, morality, and the experience of beauty and life, are finally viewed in a unified perspective. The book proposes a reading of Kant's (...) critical project as one of the most sophisticated attempts in the history of philosophy to articulate a complex notion of human "sensi­bility" as an alternative to both eighteenth-century empiricism and rationalism. The fun­damental contribution of rationality to human experience cannot be fully appreciated if the sensuous component of experience is not adequately taken into account. For Kant, "sensibility" includes functions as different as sensation, intuition, perception, emotion, passion, drive, moral feeling, and feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Kant's idea of "reflective" judgment is the peculiar discovery of the third Critique. Re­flective judgment articulates the interplay between sensibility and rationality, the world of nature and the human mind, in order to constitute human experience and the sphere of human intersubjective relationships. In the act of reflection, Kant's philosophy fi­nally comes to reflect upon itself and the meaning of its critical endeavor. (shrink)

This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic gets completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety in the appearances as to undermine any attempt at formulating empirical truths. Crucially, I (...) argue that this variety does not depict an extreme-case scenario, but our own epistemic situation without reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i.) to form empirical concepts and (ii.) approximate to empirical truth. (shrink)

In the controversial Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant claims to “complete the critical work of pure reason” [A670/b698] by providing a transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason. In order to analyse the role that this Appendix plays in the first Critique, this paper will read the Appendix alongside Kant’s comments in the B-Preface concerning the astronomy of Copernicus. Through an analysis of the nature of Kant and Copernicus’ respective use of presuppositions, and by looking at (...) their respective attempts to unify a science around a single systematic conception of the object of that science, this paper will offer a defence of the fundamental role that Kant’s transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason plays in the text. (shrink)

Some externalists have recently argued that the unity of theoretical and practical reason implies that epistemic justification is factive. It is argued that arguments for the factivity of epistemic justification either (i) equate two actions that are in fact different, or (ii) make the unwarranted assumption that the by-relation transmits justification. The unity of reason does not imply that epistemic justification is factive.

Interpretations of Anselm's Proslogion range between the extremes of 'rationalism' and 'fideism' because of the challenge of unifying its philosophical and devotional aspects. In this book, Bayer argues that a 'monastic interpretation' - or an interpretation that takes seriously the intellectual significance of our existential commitments - offers a powerful compromise. Through an extensive study of Anselm's spiritualty, especially as it is manifested in his letters and homiletic works, coupled with a profound study of Anselm's philosophy of language in the (...) De grammatico and Monologion, Bayer aims to reveal the Anselmian unity of life and thought, and thereby also the harmony between faith and reason. In this way, he defends the Proslogion as a unified and probative argument. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is that Kant employs a single conception of reason throughout his analysis of the fundamental principles of natural science, morality and politics, rational religion, and the practice of philosophy itself, and that this conception is that reason is the source of the ultimate goals or ideals for our conduct of both inquiry and action, but never a faculty that yields cognition of objects that exist independently of us, whether sensible or supersensible. In Neiman’s (...) words, “The basis of Kant’s reconception” of reason “is the denial that the rational is, or is centrally concerned with, the cognitive”, and the heart of his thesis of the unity of reason is his view that “the regulative principles of reason... shape our actions in science, morality, religion and philosophy itself”. Neiman’s work is refreshingly ambitious in its attempt to demonstrate that these generalities hold for all four of the areas she lists, but the general claims themselves will not come as a surprise to contemporary students of Kant. So for the work to succeed, it would have to break new ground in either the detailed analysis of the regulative functions of reason or in our understanding of reason’s general function in unifying the several branches of philosophy as Kant understands it. In my view, the book does neither. Neiman offers some interesting insights about Kant’s treatment of science, morality, and religion, but does not offer a rigorous analysis of the structure of Kant’s thought in any of these areas that goes beyond what many others have already provided. More importantly, she misses the opportunity to make a major advance in our understanding of the general structure of Kant’s thought. For what she describes is really similarities in our use of reason in the various areas of our inquiry and conduct; she does not show how Kant uses his conception of reason to unify the apparently disparate realms of theory and practice, or, in his terms, of nature and freedom. This task dominates the Critique of Judgment, where, far from merely recapitulating his previous accounts of the regulative use of reason in both science and morality, Kant argues as he never did before that we must be able to see the realms of nature and freedom not merely as compatible but as unified, yet also makes explicit the regulative status of reason and of this vision of unity precisely by stating his theory of the unity of reason as the culmination of a theory of reflective judgment. Neiman largely ignores Kant’s own most mature account of the unity of reason. (shrink)

Unity is a central concept in the Critique of Pure Reason, since it is only through the unifying act of our spontaneous faculties that an experience can emerge, according to Kant. However, the faculty of reason brings forth a different unity than that of the understanding: Kant characterizes the former as a collective unity, while the latter as a distributive unity. This article aims to explain the meaning of these terms, with reference to the (...) Nachlass on metaphysics and the writings on right where Kant employs them in a clearer manner. This explanation can provide a basis to understand the difference between the faculty of understanding and the faculty of reason within the first Critique, a difference rather neglected by scholars, who have focused mainly on Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding. (shrink)

The achievement of Immanuel Kant lies in demonstrating the law-giving power of the human intellect in the metaphysical basis of human cognition and in defence of human freedom. The power of reason was his response to the mechanical view of nature and scepticism in morals, aesthetics and religion. While reason extended over theory and practice, it was, he insisted, one reason: a unity. I advocate the unity of reason as key to understanding Kant’s philosophical (...) project. Given his huge output, this is an inevitably incomplete ambition. After an introductory chapter, comes an explication of the key role of the maxim followed by proposing a three-fold understanding of reason itself with its ideas and postulates. These extend our theoretical and practical knowledge in reason’s differing interests, albeit with conceptual difficulties in motivation and respect. Despite different faculties, theoretical and practical reason cannot conflict for there are not two reasons. One must have primacy which is shown to be the practical. The latter doctrine has implications for Kant’s rational theology and his broader world view. Morality’s supreme principle, a product of universalised reason, highlights the destiny of humankind and leads to a moral faith unique to humans. By virtue of reason, we have the will to realise our final end. The justification of reason’s unity leads to the regulative idea of a highest intelligence as a heuristic. Kant’s moral philosophy culminates in the concept of the highest good as the final end of human life. I discuss its secular and religious interpretations before concluding that, for Kant, we belong not only in the world of nature but in a noumenal world in which God and a future life may be the hope of our finite reason. (shrink)

This essay proposes a very important general account of Kant's critical philosophy. Avowing her debts to recent scholarship stressing themes of practical reason, freedom, history, and teleology as central to Kant's philosophical project, Neiman goes further than previous writers in elaborating the critical definition of "reason." Her principal claims are that: Kant's chief concern is to reconceive the nature of reason as the source of regulative ideas giving purpose and structure to all human activity, rather than as (...) cognitive ; insisting on the regulative nature of reason permits Kant to grasp the unity of the theoretical and the practical, or of metaphysics and ethics ; reason as regulative proposes projects for thinking about the world as a systematic whole of connections uniting while transcending the given objects of experience ; reason's capacity for transcending the given toward never-fully realized wholes shows that it is a faculty of ends and that as such its essence is freedom ; to say that practical reason has "primacy" over theoretical reason is not to say that morality provides an extension of knowledge denied to theory, but that the essence of all reason is practical, and therefore that speculative accounts of its goals and foundations are necessarily false ; the synthesis of objects by the understanding is subordinated to reason as the power of end-determination, since no science arises from the- understanding alone, and only reason can direct the understanding toward a unified system of empirical laws ; earlier philosophy mistakenly supposes that reason's desire to seek the unconditioned has a theoretical basis and satisfaction, whereas both are actually practical. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the foremost Kant scholars of our time is a welcome and timely addition to the literature. Henrich is a very prolific scholar, and the lack of English translations of most of his works may account in some measure for the fact that there has been surprisingly little sustained engagement with them by Anglo-American scholars, especially those working on Kant’s ethics. It is to be hoped that this volume will help provoke such an engagement.

Joseph Raz and Sergio Tenenbaum argue that the Guise of the Good thesis explains both the possibility of practical reason and its unity with theoretical reason, something Humean psychological theories may be unable to do. This paper will argue, however, that Raz and Tenenbaum face a dilemma: either the version of the Guise of the Good they offer is too strong to allow for weakness of will, or it will lose its theoretical advantage in preserving the (...) class='Hi'>unity of reason. (shrink)