Pub Date : 2023-04-20DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000122
Aaron Halper
Abstract Kant’s moral philosophy both enjoins the acquisition of self-knowledge as a duty, and precludes certain forms of its acquisition via what has become known as the Opacity Thesis. This article looks at several recent attempts to solve this difficulty and argues that they are inadequate. I argue instead that the Opacity Thesis rules out only the knowledge that one has acted from genuine moral principles, but does not apply in cases of moral failure. The duty of moral self-knowledge applies therefore only to one’s awareness of one’s status as a moral being and to the knowledge of one’s moral failings, both in particular actions and one’s overall character failings, one’s vices. This kind of knowledge is morally salutary as an aid to discovering one’s individual moral weakness as well as the subjective ends for which one acts, and in this way for taking up the morally required end of treating human beings as human beings. In this way, moral self-knowledge can be understood as a necessary element of moral improvement, and I conclude by suggesting several ways to understand it thereby as genuinely primary among the duties to oneself.
{"title":"Self-Knowledge and the Opacity Thesis in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue","authors":"Aaron Halper","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000122","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Kant’s moral philosophy both enjoins the acquisition of self-knowledge as a duty, and precludes certain forms of its acquisition via what has become known as the Opacity Thesis. This article looks at several recent attempts to solve this difficulty and argues that they are inadequate. I argue instead that the Opacity Thesis rules out only the knowledge that one has acted from genuine moral principles, but does not apply in cases of moral failure. The duty of moral self-knowledge applies therefore only to one’s awareness of one’s status as a moral being and to the knowledge of one’s moral failings, both in particular actions and one’s overall character failings, one’s vices. This kind of knowledge is morally salutary as an aid to discovering one’s individual moral weakness as well as the subjective ends for which one acts, and in this way for taking up the morally required end of treating human beings as human beings. In this way, moral self-knowledge can be understood as a necessary element of moral improvement, and I conclude by suggesting several ways to understand it thereby as genuinely primary among the duties to oneself.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"185 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42687161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000146
Qiannan Li
Abstract In this article, I argue that the current literature on political hope overlooks its non-instrumental value. By proposing a Kant-inspired account of treating reasonable hopes as fundamental hopes, I argue that it is rational for people to hold certain political hopes not only because such hopes promote particular ends but also because they are constitutive of a person’s practical identity as a responsible political agent with limited power to make changes. This view reveals that victims of injustice face an affective injustice because the unjust social system forces them to face a double bind in upholding their fundamental political hopes.
{"title":"A Kantian Account of Political Hopes as Fundamental Hopes","authors":"Qiannan Li","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000146","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, I argue that the current literature on political hope overlooks its non-instrumental value. By proposing a Kant-inspired account of treating reasonable hopes as fundamental hopes, I argue that it is rational for people to hold certain political hopes not only because such hopes promote particular ends but also because they are constitutive of a person’s practical identity as a responsible political agent with limited power to make changes. This view reveals that victims of injustice face an affective injustice because the unjust social system forces them to face a double bind in upholding their fundamental political hopes.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"259 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45836740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000110
L. Caranti
Abstract Kant’s criticism of democracy has been traditionally defused with the consideration that Kant’s aversion is not to democracy per se, but to direct democracy. However, what Kant says – ‘to prevent the republican constitution from being confused with the democratic one, as commonly happens’ (ZeF, 8: 351) – appears to count not only against direct democracy, but also against conceptions of democracy closer to the ones we are accustomed to. By offering a new account of what Kant sees as the real problem of democracy (direct or not), the article unpacks a lesson about the limits of democracy that has gone largely unnoticed among political theorists and Kant specialists.
{"title":"Why does Kant Think that Democracy is Necessarily Despotic?","authors":"L. Caranti","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000110","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Kant’s criticism of democracy has been traditionally defused with the consideration that Kant’s aversion is not to democracy per se, but to direct democracy. However, what Kant says – ‘to prevent the republican constitution from being confused with the democratic one, as commonly happens’ (ZeF, 8: 351) – appears to count not only against direct democracy, but also against conceptions of democracy closer to the ones we are accustomed to. By offering a new account of what Kant sees as the real problem of democracy (direct or not), the article unpacks a lesson about the limits of democracy that has gone largely unnoticed among political theorists and Kant specialists.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"167 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47668447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-04DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000092
Nabeel Hamid
Abstract This article examines Kant’s treatment of the design argument for the existence of God, or physicotheology. It criticizes the interpretation that, for Kant, the assumption of intelligent design satisfies an internal demand of inquiry. It argues that Kant’s positive appraisal of physicotheology is instead better understood in terms of its polemical utility for rebutting objections to practical belief in God upon which Kant’s ethicotheological argument rests, and thus as an instrument in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy. Kantian physicotheology plays this role (a) by criticizing alternative speculative accounts of the ground of nature, and (b) by analogizing from the structure of finite rational agency in order to represent more clearly the action of an ideal agent.
{"title":"Physicotheology in Kant’s Transition from Nature to Freedom","authors":"Nabeel Hamid","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000092","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines Kant’s treatment of the design argument for the existence of God, or physicotheology. It criticizes the interpretation that, for Kant, the assumption of intelligent design satisfies an internal demand of inquiry. It argues that Kant’s positive appraisal of physicotheology is instead better understood in terms of its polemical utility for rebutting objections to practical belief in God upon which Kant’s ethicotheological argument rests, and thus as an instrument in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy. Kantian physicotheology plays this role (a) by criticizing alternative speculative accounts of the ground of nature, and (b) by analogizing from the structure of finite rational agency in order to represent more clearly the action of an ideal agent.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"201 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45831610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-30DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000079
Samuel Kerstein
Abstract According to Kant’s ethics, at least on one common interpretation, persons have a special worth or dignity that demands respect. But personhood is not coextensive with human life; for example, individuals can live in severe dementia after losing the capacities constitutive of personhood. Some philosophers, including David Velleman and Dennis Cooley, have suggested that individuals living after the loss of their personhood might offend against the Kantian dignity the individuals once possessed. Cooley has even argued that it is morally required on Kantian grounds for those who realize that they will lose their personhood as a result of dementia (e.g. Alzheimer’s) to hasten their deaths (e.g. commit suicide). This article specifies circumstances in which post-personhood living might indeed involve an affront to the Kantian dignity of a person who once was. However, the article contends, Kant implies that it is neither morally required nor even morally permissible for someone in an early stage of Alzheimer’s to hasten their death to avoid such an affront, even if they have autonomously chosen to do so. The article adds an ethical perspective to debate on physician-assisted dying, in particular on the moral permissibility of the soon-to-be-demented ending their lives.
{"title":"Dignity, Dementia and Death","authors":"Samuel Kerstein","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000079","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to Kant’s ethics, at least on one common interpretation, persons have a special worth or dignity that demands respect. But personhood is not coextensive with human life; for example, individuals can live in severe dementia after losing the capacities constitutive of personhood. Some philosophers, including David Velleman and Dennis Cooley, have suggested that individuals living after the loss of their personhood might offend against the Kantian dignity the individuals once possessed. Cooley has even argued that it is morally required on Kantian grounds for those who realize that they will lose their personhood as a result of dementia (e.g. Alzheimer’s) to hasten their deaths (e.g. commit suicide). This article specifies circumstances in which post-personhood living might indeed involve an affront to the Kantian dignity of a person who once was. However, the article contends, Kant implies that it is neither morally required nor even morally permissible for someone in an early stage of Alzheimer’s to hasten their death to avoid such an affront, even if they have autonomously chosen to do so. The article adds an ethical perspective to debate on physician-assisted dying, in particular on the moral permissibility of the soon-to-be-demented ending their lives.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"221 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47115707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-29DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000055
P. Romero
{"title":"Macarena Marey , Voluntad omnilateral y finitud de la Tierra: Una lectura de la filosofía política de Kant. Adrogué: Editorial La Cebra, 2021. Pp. 335. ISBN 9789873621918 (pbk) €20.00","authors":"P. Romero","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"318 - 321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48125276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-24DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000067
S. Tsuda
study is the political potential of the idea of popular sovereignty, as a means to ameliorate – and, ultimately, to eradicate – the injustices of a system of nation-states that negates the active and fully omnilateral participation of diverse political communities around the world. For Marey, Kant’s commitment to an omnilateral will should not be reduced to an ideal mark of all political authority; rather it should be assumed as the normative criterion against which we must evaluate, contest and transform the injustices of our existing practices and institutions. For these reasons, the book represents an important contribution to ongoing debates in Kantian studies, as well as to problems beyond Kant. The book leaves us with the hope of a kind of ‘political ethics’, one that is based on our unavoidable interaction as free agents in a shared and finite earth.
{"title":"J. Colin McQuillan (ed.), Baumgarten’s Aesthetics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. Pp. viii + 364. ISBN 9781538146255 (hbk) £100.00","authors":"S. Tsuda","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000067","url":null,"abstract":"study is the political potential of the idea of popular sovereignty, as a means to ameliorate – and, ultimately, to eradicate – the injustices of a system of nation-states that negates the active and fully omnilateral participation of diverse political communities around the world. For Marey, Kant’s commitment to an omnilateral will should not be reduced to an ideal mark of all political authority; rather it should be assumed as the normative criterion against which we must evaluate, contest and transform the injustices of our existing practices and institutions. For these reasons, the book represents an important contribution to ongoing debates in Kantian studies, as well as to problems beyond Kant. The book leaves us with the hope of a kind of ‘political ethics’, one that is based on our unavoidable interaction as free agents in a shared and finite earth.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"321 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46880666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-15DOI: 10.1017/S1369415423000031
Lisa Shabel
Dyck and others have already pointed out; but if Baumgarten is one of the Pietist critics of Wolffian rationalism, it is also the case that he is not a complete Leibnizian. Nuzzo, for one, is careful to draw attention to the differences between Baumgarten and Leibniz, but for the most part Baumgarten’s departures from Leibniz are less attended to than those from Wolff. That said, this collection does succeed in stripping Baumgarten of the label of a mere ‘member of the Wolffian school’, which has long been appended to him. The picture of Baumgarten that emerges from this collection is of a much more innovative, even lively thinker, in part as a result of his immersion in the competing intellectual traditions of his day. Thus this collection constitutes an important contribution to the ongoing Baumgarten renaissance.
{"title":"Carl Posy and Ofra Rechter (eds), Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics, vol. 1. The Critical Philosophy and its Roots. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. x + 321. ISBN 9781107042902 (hbk) £75.00","authors":"Lisa Shabel","doi":"10.1017/S1369415423000031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415423000031","url":null,"abstract":"Dyck and others have already pointed out; but if Baumgarten is one of the Pietist critics of Wolffian rationalism, it is also the case that he is not a complete Leibnizian. Nuzzo, for one, is careful to draw attention to the differences between Baumgarten and Leibniz, but for the most part Baumgarten’s departures from Leibniz are less attended to than those from Wolff. That said, this collection does succeed in stripping Baumgarten of the label of a mere ‘member of the Wolffian school’, which has long been appended to him. The picture of Baumgarten that emerges from this collection is of a much more innovative, even lively thinker, in part as a result of his immersion in the competing intellectual traditions of his day. Thus this collection constitutes an important contribution to the ongoing Baumgarten renaissance.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"324 - 328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43373264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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