Pub Date : 2023-01-06DOI: 10.1017/S1369415422000498
Kate A. Moran
Abstract Typically, Kant describes maxims that violate the moral law as engaging in a kind of comparative judgement: the person who makes a false promise judges it best – at least subjectively – to deceive her friend. I argue that this is not the only possible account of moral failure for Kant. In particular, when we examine maxims of so-called despondency (Verzagtheit) we find that some maxims are resistant to comparative judgement. I argue that this is true for at least two reasons: first, the despondent agent has a maxim to avoid suffering at all costs; second, this anxious preoccupation with suffering makes the despondent agent prone to failures associated with the imagination and its role in creating an ideal of happiness.
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Pub Date : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/S1369415422000541
Nabeel Hamid
Catherine Wilson once described Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement as ‘a long, worried, ambivalent book about evolution, beauty, and living forms’ (2008: 98, n. 63). Her pithy remark might explain a widely acknowledged feature of scholarship on the third Critique, namely its piecemeal character. The apparent ambivalence of Kant’s work – moving as it does across aesthetics and philosophy of art, philosophy of biology and the general theory of science, and even philosophy of religion and the final end of human existence, all the while elaborating his baroque philosophical psychology – has led to a suitably fragmentary body of secondary literature. One interpretative challenge, thus, has been to present a unified reading of the treatise, which would show a single overarching thesis running through its fascinating discussions of beauty, sublimity, art, biology, cognition and religion. Ido Geiger’s new monograph takes up this challenge, but with qualifications. Rejecting ‘collaged’ readings of the third Critique (p. 50), he offers a partial remedy to the problem of its unity. The remedy is partial inasmuch as the thesis Geiger sets out to defend – that the principle of purposiveness is a transcendental condition of empirical cognition – only addresses one of the questions Kant identifies as his concern and, indeed, not the principal question. Geiger’s account deals with the narrower of the two ‘transition’ problems Kant raises in the Introductions: the transition from an account of the universal, transcendental laws of nature to an account of its particular, empirical laws. In Geiger’s preferred formulation, this problem amounts to articulating ‘the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience and knowledge of nature’, as opposed to the general conditions of experience laid out in the first Critique’s Analytic of Principles (p. 10). The account presented here sets aside, however, the central problem of the third Critique: that of bridging the ‘incalculable gulf’ between nature and freedom, or between the respective claims of epistemic and moral rationality, with which Kant aims to bring the critical enterprise to a close (CPJ, 5: 175). Readers expecting an interpretation of the third Critique as a unified whole guided by that task, as advertised in the front matter of the book, will be disappointed. Geiger openly admits this limitation, stating plainly in his introduction that such a reading is not on offer – notably, the sections on the sublime and on fine art as well as the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment are excluded from his account, as is Kant’s intriguing and, for the main transition problem, crucial discussion in the Methodology of Teleological Judgment of physicoand ethico-theology. In brief, with regard to the unity of the third Critique, Geiger’s reading avoids being a collage only by passing over what is arguably the book’s central concern. That said, with respect to his specific objective, Geiger presents a compell
{"title":"Ido Geiger, Kant and the Claims of the Empirical World: A Transcendental Reading of the Critique of the Power of Judgment Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022 Pp. xiv + 225 ISBN 9781108834261 (hbk) £75.00","authors":"Nabeel Hamid","doi":"10.1017/S1369415422000541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415422000541","url":null,"abstract":"Catherine Wilson once described Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement as ‘a long, worried, ambivalent book about evolution, beauty, and living forms’ (2008: 98, n. 63). Her pithy remark might explain a widely acknowledged feature of scholarship on the third Critique, namely its piecemeal character. The apparent ambivalence of Kant’s work – moving as it does across aesthetics and philosophy of art, philosophy of biology and the general theory of science, and even philosophy of religion and the final end of human existence, all the while elaborating his baroque philosophical psychology – has led to a suitably fragmentary body of secondary literature. One interpretative challenge, thus, has been to present a unified reading of the treatise, which would show a single overarching thesis running through its fascinating discussions of beauty, sublimity, art, biology, cognition and religion. Ido Geiger’s new monograph takes up this challenge, but with qualifications. Rejecting ‘collaged’ readings of the third Critique (p. 50), he offers a partial remedy to the problem of its unity. The remedy is partial inasmuch as the thesis Geiger sets out to defend – that the principle of purposiveness is a transcendental condition of empirical cognition – only addresses one of the questions Kant identifies as his concern and, indeed, not the principal question. Geiger’s account deals with the narrower of the two ‘transition’ problems Kant raises in the Introductions: the transition from an account of the universal, transcendental laws of nature to an account of its particular, empirical laws. In Geiger’s preferred formulation, this problem amounts to articulating ‘the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience and knowledge of nature’, as opposed to the general conditions of experience laid out in the first Critique’s Analytic of Principles (p. 10). The account presented here sets aside, however, the central problem of the third Critique: that of bridging the ‘incalculable gulf’ between nature and freedom, or between the respective claims of epistemic and moral rationality, with which Kant aims to bring the critical enterprise to a close (CPJ, 5: 175). Readers expecting an interpretation of the third Critique as a unified whole guided by that task, as advertised in the front matter of the book, will be disappointed. Geiger openly admits this limitation, stating plainly in his introduction that such a reading is not on offer – notably, the sections on the sublime and on fine art as well as the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment are excluded from his account, as is Kant’s intriguing and, for the main transition problem, crucial discussion in the Methodology of Teleological Judgment of physicoand ethico-theology. In brief, with regard to the unity of the third Critique, Geiger’s reading avoids being a collage only by passing over what is arguably the book’s central concern. That said, with respect to his specific objective, Geiger presents a compell","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"157 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46112916","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 : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/s1369415422000553
Reed Winegar
{"title":"Rudolf A. Makkreel, Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021 Pp. xii + 284 ISBN 9780810144316 (hbk) $99.95","authors":"Reed Winegar","doi":"10.1017/s1369415422000553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1369415422000553","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"164 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46810911","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 : 2022-12-21DOI: 10.1017/s1369415422000565
J. Shorter-Bourhanou
{"title":"Jimmy Yab, Kant and the Politics of Racism: Towards Kant’s Racialised Form of Cosmopolitan Right Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021 Pp. vii + 285 ISBN 978-3030691004 (hbk) €109.99","authors":"J. Shorter-Bourhanou","doi":"10.1017/s1369415422000565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1369415422000565","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"161 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42076314","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 : 2022-12-13DOI: 10.1017/S1369415422000528
S. Hope
Abstract I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness.
{"title":"Perfect and Imperfect Duty: Unpacking Kant’s Complex Distinction","authors":"S. Hope","doi":"10.1017/S1369415422000528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415422000528","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"63 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42539778","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 : 2022-12-12DOI: 10.1017/S136941542200053X
Melissa Seymour Fahmy
Abstract For several decades, Kant scholars, inspired by the Groundwork false-promising example, have constructed consent-based criteria for using another merely as a means. Unfortunately, these consent-based accounts produce assessments that are both counter-intuitive and un-Kantian in relatively simple cases. This article investigates why these consent-based accounts fail and offers an alternative. The Groundwork false-promising example has encouraged a problematically narrow understanding of the conditions for using another merely as a means in virtue of the fact that the example involves a consent-sensitive duty. This article demonstrates that the scope of the prohibition on using another merely as a means includes both consent-sensitive and consent-insensitive duties and offers a duty-based account that reflects this.
{"title":"Never Merely as a Means: Rethinking the Role and Relevance of Consent","authors":"Melissa Seymour Fahmy","doi":"10.1017/S136941542200053X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S136941542200053X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For several decades, Kant scholars, inspired by the Groundwork false-promising example, have constructed consent-based criteria for using another merely as a means. Unfortunately, these consent-based accounts produce assessments that are both counter-intuitive and un-Kantian in relatively simple cases. This article investigates why these consent-based accounts fail and offers an alternative. The Groundwork false-promising example has encouraged a problematically narrow understanding of the conditions for using another merely as a means in virtue of the fact that the example involves a consent-sensitive duty. This article demonstrates that the scope of the prohibition on using another merely as a means includes both consent-sensitive and consent-insensitive duties and offers a duty-based account that reflects this.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"41 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46589380","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 : 2022-12-02DOI: 10.1017/S1369415422000516
J. Alberg
Abstract Both Rousseau and Kant wrote their works with the intention of contributing to the well-being of humans. The ways in which Kant followed Rousseau to achieve this aim were many and go beyond those easily recognized. This article presents evidence for Rousseau’s influence in the Discipline of Pure Reason chapter of the Doctrine of Method in the First Critique. Both Rousseau and Kant emphasized discipline as a necessary part of a proper education that leads to a well-ordered life. Kant’s form of discipline is modeled on the education given to Emile. This approach to the Discipline chapter also affords an enlightening view of Kant’s position in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.
{"title":"Did Rousseau Teach Kant Discipline?","authors":"J. Alberg","doi":"10.1017/S1369415422000516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415422000516","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Both Rousseau and Kant wrote their works with the intention of contributing to the well-being of humans. The ways in which Kant followed Rousseau to achieve this aim were many and go beyond those easily recognized. This article presents evidence for Rousseau’s influence in the Discipline of Pure Reason chapter of the Doctrine of Method in the First Critique. Both Rousseau and Kant emphasized discipline as a necessary part of a proper education that leads to a well-ordered life. Kant’s form of discipline is modeled on the education given to Emile. This approach to the Discipline chapter also affords an enlightening view of Kant’s position in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44829844","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 : 2022-12-02DOI: 10.1017/S1369415422000504
Vojtěch Kolomý
Abstract Although in his earlier ethical writings Kant explains the concept of moral feeling, inherited from the British sentimentalists, as a peculiar feeling of respect for the moral law that functions as an incentive for moral actions, the Doctrine of Virtue seems to add complexity to the issue. There, Kant discusses two similar aesthetic predispositions, moral feeling and respect, whose relationship to the feeling of respect is far from clear. This article offers a much needed elucidation of the relationship between these three concepts. In the first part, I show that Kant, in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue, transforms the British sentimentalists’ construal of moral feeling into that of the feeling of respect as the sole moral incentive. In the second part, I argue that, although in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant distinguishes, for a specific reason, between the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and that of respect, they are both ultimately identical to the feeling of respect. The conclusion is that nothing of substance changes between Kant’s earlier thinking and his views in the Doctrine of Virtue; for Kant there is just one feeling that properly deserves the name of moral feeling, the feeling of respect.
{"title":"Kant on Moral Feeling and Respect","authors":"Vojtěch Kolomý","doi":"10.1017/S1369415422000504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415422000504","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although in his earlier ethical writings Kant explains the concept of moral feeling, inherited from the British sentimentalists, as a peculiar feeling of respect for the moral law that functions as an incentive for moral actions, the Doctrine of Virtue seems to add complexity to the issue. There, Kant discusses two similar aesthetic predispositions, moral feeling and respect, whose relationship to the feeling of respect is far from clear. This article offers a much needed elucidation of the relationship between these three concepts. In the first part, I show that Kant, in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue, transforms the British sentimentalists’ construal of moral feeling into that of the feeling of respect as the sole moral incentive. In the second part, I argue that, although in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant distinguishes, for a specific reason, between the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and that of respect, they are both ultimately identical to the feeling of respect. The conclusion is that nothing of substance changes between Kant’s earlier thinking and his views in the Doctrine of Virtue; for Kant there is just one feeling that properly deserves the name of moral feeling, the feeling of respect.","PeriodicalId":54140,"journal":{"name":"Kantian Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"105 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44905774","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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