In her recent book, Samantha Matherne argues that the primary cognitive function of the imagination in Kant's philosophy is to exhibit concepts, that is, to make them sensible. She further argues that exhibition is the unifying thread in Kant's treatment of the imagination in the theoretical, aesthetic, and practical domains. In this paper, I present two problem cases for her interpretation. First, I argue that it is a mistake to think of perception as a case of exhibition. I focus on Matherne's claim that forming perceptual images requires empirical schemata and argue that this conflicts with Kant's remarks in the “Schematism” chapter and makes it hard to account for empirical concept formation. Second, I argue that the free play of the faculties in the experience of natural beauty is not a case of exhibition, as this would violate Kant's claim that judgments of beauty are not conceptual judgments.
How can we understand people—ourselves and others? Does this require a special form of understanding, different from how we understand non-human phenomena? In this paper, I develop a Beauvoirian-inspired proposal for answering these questions. This proposed account of understanding people lends some support to a long tradition, according to which, we don't understand people in the same way that we understand non-human natural phenomena insofar as understanding people (like literary works) requires an empathic, imaginative, simulationist, or interpretive form. Yet, the Beauvoirian view complicates and challenges this tradition by bringing out the irreducibly second-personal structure of understanding people. It also highlights its embodied and ethical character. In emphasizing these, the Beauvoirian account offers a welcome alternative to empathic views of understanding people (and of relating to literature) and contributes to our understanding of the second-person nexus. It also proposes a refreshing way of thinking about the ethical dimensions of epistemology.
This article examines the idea that deep disagreements are best understood as rooted in conceptual differences rather than differences in judgments and opinions, by means of a reflection on the differences between a vegan and a meat eater. The aim is not to develop a new theory of “deep disagreement” but to gain clarity about one field in which agreement, even fruitful conversation, is hard to reach. This article shows how the exposure of conceptual differences can offer a way to move beyond this situation where positions have become fortified; but this requires a broad, praxis oriented, understanding of concepts and conceptual change.
I pursue Kant's characterization of the ideas of reason as the ‘divinity of our soul’ with the aim of correcting a highly influential reading of his philosophy as rejecting the theocentric cognitive model, one measuring human cognition against the norm of the divine intuitive intellect. I begin by establishing the reliance of the Critical epistemology on such a model. This reliance comes to light in Kant's theory of the epistemic role of ‘ideas of reason’ as fashioning our cognition “after the model of the intuitive (archetypical) understanding,” or as he also says, after “a highest reason of which our reason is only a weak copy.” I then explore the common Platonic origins of Kant's doctrine of ideas and theory of the intuitive intellect. This reveals how the imputed function of ideas represents a self-conscious nod to the theocentric model of Plato's “spiritual flight” towards a God's-eye view of reality, an endeavor Kant describes as “deserving respect and imitation.”
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