[2017]  Kant Bibliography 2018  [      ]

(under development; please send corrections,
missing entries and/or abstracts
or annotations to Steve Naragon)

A citation source key can be found at the bottom of this page.

[top]Kant    [ Kant  —  A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Editions and translations of the writings of Immanuel Kant

---

[See also the items listed under Collections]

---

“Untersuchung der Frage, ob die Erde in ihrer Umdrehung um die Achse, wodurch sie die Abwechselung des Tages und der Nacht hervorbringt, einige Veränderung seit den ersten Zeiten ihres Ursprungs erlitten habe” (1754)

 ——. “Cercetarea chestiunii, dacă Pământul în rotaţia lui în jurul axei, prin care produce alternarea zilei şi a nopţii, a suferit vreo schimbare de la primele timpuri ale originii sale şi cum am putea fi siguri de aceasta, temă propusă de Academia Regală de Ştiinţe din Berlin pentru premiul anului în curs.” [Romanian]  Translated by Alexandru Boboc. Revista de Filosofie 65.1 (2018): 103-7. [PW] [online]

“Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, psysikalisch erwogen” (1754)

 ——. “Chestiunea dacă Pământul îmbătrâneşte, considerată fizicalist.” [Romanian]  Translated by Alexandru Boboc. Revista de Filosofie 65.2 (2018): 191-203. [PW] [online]

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785)

 ——. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. [English] Translated by Allen W. Wood. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. [xxxvii, 106 p.] [WC

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Revision of the 2002 Yale edition, with an introduction and notes by Wood.

Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793)

 ——. Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology. Edited and translated by Allen W Wood and George Di Giovanni; revised and with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Revised second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [xxxviii, 254 p.] [M]

Zum ewigen Frieden (1795)

 ——. Om den eviga freden. [Swedish] Translated by Alf W. Johansson. Second, revised edition. Göteborg: Bokförlaget Daidalos, 2018. [132 p.] [WC]

Nachlaß/Reflections

 ——. Die frühen Notate zu Baumgartens Metaphysica. Edited by Günter Gawlick, Lothar Kreimendahl, Werner Stark, Norbert Hinske, Oliver R. Scholz, and Meinolf Vielberg. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2018. [580 p.] [WC]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Forschungen und Materialien zur deutschen Aufklärung, I.5.

Lecture Notes

 ——. “‘Sinais que substituem os conceitos das coisas, encontramo-los nos poetas’: Kant sobre a faculdade de designação.” Translated into Portuguese by Fernando M. F. Silva. Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 536-45. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Translation of excerpts from Kant's lectures on anthropology: Collins, an-Parow, an-Friedländer, an-Starke (Menschenkunde), Busolt, and Dohna-Wundlacken.

Collections

---

[top]A    [ Kant  —  A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Ackeren, Marcel van, and Martin Sticker. “Kant and the Problem of Demandingness: Introduction.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 373-78. [PW]

 ——, and Martin Sticker. “Moral Rationalism and Demandingness in Kant.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 407-28. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] We discuss Kant’s conception of moral rationalism from the viewpoint of recent debates, which have distinguished different forms of moral rationalism. We argue that Kant’s version, ‘silencing’, is different and stronger than currently held versions of moral rationalism and that it also differs from versions of silencing that contemporary thinkers advocate. We then discuss Kant’s version of silencing in the context of the moral demandingness debate and argue that silencing can make a perfect duty very demanding. However, it is important that whilst in cases of conflict between duty and personal happiness the normative standing of the latter is silenced, silencing does not require that agents do all they can in the case of imperfect duties. We finally indicate the kind of latitude imperfect duties allow for, according to Kant’s strong form of moral rationalism.

Alberg, Jeremiah. “Reading Kant: From Rousseau to Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 7-12. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper extends Richard Velkely’s interpretation of the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant by examining it in the light of the concept of “scandal.” Kant himself saw the “scandal of ostensible contradiction of reason with itself” as what drove him to a critical examination of reason. My own research has shown that Rousseau’s system is rooted in scandal, so the task it to connect these two facts. First, the exact meaning and nature of scandal has to be determined through a close reading of Kant’s Remarks in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Next, one must trace the connection between Kant’s reading of Rousseau and the problem that eventually becomes known as the antinomy of pure reason.

al-Karaki, Balqis. “‘Striking Similarities’: Ibn Sina’s Takhyil and Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment.” Philosophy East & West 68.1 (2018): 1-22. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] A study which examined the links between Ibn Sīnā's takhyil and Immanuel Kant's aesthetic judgment and ideas is presented. Topics covered include the similarities of takhyil with Kant's aesthetic judgment and ideas, difference in their stance on syllogism and its potential application to art and poetry and the similarity between Kant's artist and Ibn Sīnā's second kind of prophecy.

Allais, Lucy. “Evil and Practical Reason.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 83-101. [M]

Altman, Matthew C. Rev. of Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason, by Konstantin Pollok (2017). Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.1 (2018): 177-78. [PI]

 ——. Rev. of Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self, edited by Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson (2017). British Journal for the History of Philosophy (published online: 21 Aug 2018). [PW]

Alves Fernandes, Darley. “Kant e o sentimento moral.” [Portuguese; Kant and the moral feeling] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 488-510. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Our aim in this paper is to make a general analyze of the moral feeling in Kantian moral philosophy establishing a relationship with the theme of moral motivation. The structure of our argument will be divided into three parts: (i) a historical-conceptual rebuilding of the term moral sense, stressing the influence of Hutcheson on Kantian moral philosophy; (ii) we will investigate the esthetical nature of the feeling in Kant through the faculty of pleasure and unpleasure, (iii) we will stressing our defense of which the feeling is a Kantian trying to explain the subjective demands necessary to the moral acting, this is, the moral feeling explains the dispositional attitude of the subject concerning the moral law.

Alweiss, Lilian. “Embodiment and Self-Awareness – Evans, Cassam and Husserl.” Philosophy 93.1 (2018): 31-51. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In recent years there has been a general attempt – inspired by P. F. Strawson – to naturalise Kant's notion of the transcendental self. The argument being that self-consciousness should refer to neither a kind of noumenal nor mental self but that the self-conscious subject must conceive of itself as an embodied entity, a person among persons that regards itself as an element of the objective order of the world. While Kant does not make room for the notion of an embodied transcendental self, this is where we need to go as our bodily awareness is central both for self-knowledge and the possibility of cognition and thus a transcendental condition for knowledge claims. In this paper I should like to single out Quassim Cassam's work Self and World to see whether such a position is tenable. Cassam's main claim is that we can only become aware of ourselves as subjects if we are at the very same time aware of ourselves as objects located in the spatio-temporal world. We could not be self-conscious and ascribe experiences to ourselves unless we are also aware of ourselves as a physical object among other physical objects in the world. The central claim is that when we self-refer we do not refer to two distinct entities, one possessing only mental, and the other possessing only physical features, rather we refer to a subject that is both mental and physical at the very same time. Awareness of ourselves qua subject is just awareness of ourselves qua object. This paper will focus on this claim alone and will ask whether it is tenable. The answer will be negative. Drawing on the work of Edmund Husserl, I shall argue that there is an inherent flaw in Cassam's position which he has inherited from Gareth Evans’ depiction of the self. The contention will be that our awareness of ourselves qua subject is not compatible with the awareness of ourselves qua object.

Ameriks, Karl. “Once Again: The End of All Things.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 213-30. [M]

Androulidakis, Konstantinos. “Η καντιανή θεμελίωση της τελολογικής ηθικής.” [Greek; The Kantian foundation of teleological morality] Vol. 12 (Ethics): 425-30. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The main question of this paper is: Is Kantian ethics merely deontological and formalistic, or does it ackowledge objective and universal ends and values? In the Kantian scholarship, the first alternatives seems to be a sort of communis opinio. It is the aim of this paper to examine again the issue. Kant distinguishes between the "fundamental principle of morality", which, he holds, is purely formal, and the object or final end of the will, which does include (prescribe) material ends such as, inter alia, humanity, personal perfection and happiness of others. It will be shown that Kantian ethics, contrary to widespread views, does indeed lay the ground for a teleological, virtue and values ethics.

[top] B[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Bacin, Stefano. “Kant and Feder on the Will, Happiness and the Aim of Moral Philosophy.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 232-49. [PW]

Bader, Ralf M. Rev. of Significance and System: Essays on Kant's Ethics, by Mark Timmons (2017). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Feb 2018, #1). [M] [online]

Barker, Michael. “Kant’s Maxim for Judging Organisms.” Review of Metaphysics 72.2 (2018): 301-30. [PI]

Barquinero del Toro, Sara. Rev. of Kant et les empirismes, edited by Antoine Grandjean (2017). Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 586-91. [M] [online]

Basaglia, Federica.  “Kants Definition von Begehrungsvermögen und sein Verständnis vom tierischen Leben.”  Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 39-58. [PW]

Basile, Cassandra. “Dialettica della ragione, teleologia e idea di mondo in Kant Introduzione.” [Italian; Dialectic of Reason, Teleology and the Idea of World in Kant Introduction] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 386-91. [M] [online]

 ——. “Illusione e Inganno: parvenza trascendentale e critica come katharsis in Kant.” [Italian; Delusion and Deception: Transcendental Illusion and Critique as Katharsis in Kant] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 410-26. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The aim of this paper is to consider transcendental illusion within a broader frame, i.e. in relation to sensory illusion, because although in the Introduction to «Transcendental Dialectics» Kant makes only brief references to the illusion of the senses, focusing, instead, on the concept of illusion as object of his critic, I actually believe that it is possible to establish a parallel between the two kinds of illusion, because I think that the way in which Kant structures the question of transcendental illusion is borrowed from sensory illusion with regard both to the use of some terms and to a certain methodology. The parallel established is fundamental to enter another subtle issue underlying transcendental illusion: the shift that can occur, in some cases, from simple delusion to deception, which can be grasped through the broad vocabulary used by Kant: Illusion, Blendwerk, Wahn, Täuschung and Betrug. The final passage will concern the understanding of why the critique is described as a cathartic method in the context of transcendental illusion.

Bauer, Katharina. “Cognitive Self‐Enhancement as a Duty to Oneself: A Kantian Perspective.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 56.1 (2018): 36-58. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Recently some bioethicists and neuroscientists have argued for an imperative of chemical cognitive enhancement. This imperative is usually based on consequentialist grounds. In this paper, the topic of cognitive self‐enhancement is discussed from a Kantian point of view in order to shed new light on the controversial debate. With Kant, it is an imperfect duty to oneself to strive for perfecting one's own natural and moral capacities beyond one's natural condition, but there is no duty to enhance others. A Kantian approach does not directly lead to a duty of chemical cognitive self‐enhancement, but it also does not clearly rule out that this type of enhancement can be an appropriate means to the end of self‐improvement. This paper shows the benefits of a Kantian view, which offers a consistent ideal of self‐perfection and teaches us a lesson about the crucial relevance of the attitude that underlies one's striving for cognitive self‐improvement: the lesson of treating oneself as an end in itself and not as mere means to the end of better output.

Baxley, Anne Margaret. Rev. of Virtues of Freedom: Selected Essays on Kant, by Paul Guyer (2016). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Jan 2018, #2). [M] [online]

Beade, Ileana. “Kant en el debate contemporáneo acerca de los derechos humanos, el cosmopolitismo y la paz.” [Spanish] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 103-9. [M] [online]

Behtash, Mohammadreza, and Ali Karbasizadeh. “The Role of 'Critique of Judgment' in the Explanation of Experiential Causality in Transcendental Idealism of Kant.” [Farsi] Metaphyzik 9.24 (2018): 15-32. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The role of the 'Critique of Judgment' in the explanation of empirical causality in the transcendental idealism of Kant, could be considered from two aspect. first is the explanation of meaning of experiential causality in the 'Critique of Pure Reason', and another is the explanation of relation between 'a priori' law of experiential causality and 'a-posteriori' laws of experiential causality. Kant in the 'Critique of Judgment', with assertion on distinction between 'a priori', constitutive, and absolutely necessary principle of causation and 'a posteriori', unnecessary, and experiential causality laws, tries to fill the gap between the two classes of laws by a priori and regulative principle and of purposiveness that mechanism and organism (teleology) are it's applications and so completes his explanation about his transcendental idealism about experiential causality. Kant in the 'Critique of Judgment', with assertion on distinction between 'a priori', constitutive, and absolutely necessary principle of causation and 'a posteriori', unnecessary, and experiential causality laws, tries to fill the gap between the two classes of laws by 'a priori' and regulative principle and of purposiveness that mechanism and organism (teleology) are it's applications and so completes his explanation about his transcendental idealism about experiential causality.

Bilgiç, Meriç. “New Transcendental Dialectics between Kant and Hegel.” Vol. 22 (Metaphilosophy): 5-12. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper offers a new transcendental dialectical logic within the mathematical set theory between Kant and Hegel, it is both free of culture and culturally meaningful. It has neither been derived from Kant nor Hegel, has been hypothesized from our teaching experiences. It gives a new general systematization of philosophy, and a meaningful total picture of philosophy. It is also a transition formula between natural and artificial intelligence so as to be an answer from a transcendental Cartesian point to our postmodern era that could be characterized with a double alienation.

Bliss, Mavis. Rev. of Understanding Kant’s Ethics, by Michael Cholbi (2016). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 151-55. [PW]

Blöser, Claudia. “Human Fallibility and the Need for Forgiveness.” Philosophia (posted: 15 Feb 2018): 1-19. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article proposes a Kantian account of our reasons to forgive that situates our moral fallibility as their ultimate ground. I explore similarities and differences between Kant’s account in the Doctrine of Virtue and the more recent account offered by Garrard and McNaughton (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103(1), 39–60, 2003). After tracing the connection between moral fallibility and moral luck, I discuss Kant’s argument for a duty to be forgiving. Kant’s strategy yields a plausible account of the normative status of forgiveness: Although we generally have a moral reason (a “wide duty”) to forgive others, forgiveness is not required in every case of wrongdoing. Kant’s argument is based on the assumption that we are all in need of forgiveness, the nature of which I go on to explain. Forgiveness has the power to relieve us of a burden that results from moral failure, which grounds both its standing as a duty and its importance in the lives of fallible moral agents.

Boros, Gabor. “Freedom in Nature, Freedom of the Mind in Spinoza.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 27-46. [PW]

Botwinick, Aryeh. “Moses Maimonides und Immanuel Kant – negative Theologie, Skeptizismus und die Rolle des Unendlichen.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 66.1 (2018): 25-42. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper argues that Kant’s argument in favor of the primacy of the categories over the world is embedded in a Maimonidean stream of theorizing. In terms of how words and concepts are configured in relation to possible entities outside of themselves, it recapitulates Maimonides’ argument concerning how to situate the human world in relation to God. The judge in Maimonides is the human being who ideally encodes in his character and personality the metaphysical stance reflected in Kant’s categories and Maimonides’ theorizing of God.

Boudouris, Konstantinos, editor-in-chief. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy. 75 vols. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2018. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The twenty-third World Congress of Philosophy was held in Athens in 2013, sponsored by the Greek Philosophical Society in cooperation with the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie. The theme of the Congress was "Philosophy as Inquiry and Way of Life." This collection contains all of the section papers in the various official languages of the congress (over 1,700 papers collected in 75 thematic volumes). Papers appropriately related to Kant for the purposes of this bibliography are listed separately: Alberg, Androulidakis, Bilgiç, Cesar Martin, Chiurazzi, Croitoru, Dahan, De Federicis, Falsafi, Ferrero Martínez, Filho, Forschler, Fozarova, Greenberg, Haiyan, Heyd, Hodges, Kahn, Katrechko, Kaya, Kim, Kodelja, Kravchenko, Leirfall, Leserre, Mom, Nita, Osborne, Polias, Šauers, Shcheglova, Shimony, Simfa, Siyar, Ward, Wirtz.

Brady, Emily. Rev. of The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant, by Robert Doran (2015). Comparative Literature 70.1 (2018): 93-95. [PW]

Brandt, Reinhard. “Was ist Aufklärung? Beobachtungen zur Kantischen Antwort.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 147-69. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant’s essay on enlightenment (1784) is a concealed appeal to prepare the republican order of the civil state under the remaining protection of the king. And: The problem of women and coloured people to become active citizens.

 ——. Rev. of Wie aufgeklärt ist die Vernunft der Aufklärung? Eine Kritik aus aristotelischer Sicht, by Arbogast Schmitt (2016). Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 361-66. [PW]

Breckman, Warren. “Bootstrapping, Self-Binding, and Other Metaphors of Antifoundationalism.” History and Theory 57.3 (2018): 413-18. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In Images of History, Richard Eldridge deploys the metaphor of “bootstrapping” to describe the possibility of a mutually constitutive interaction of historical understanding and reflection on political ideals outside of and beyond the notion of a completed theory or teleological development. Although “bootstrapping” does considerable work in the book, it remains relatively unthematized in itself. This article explores the concept of bootstrapping in both Eldridge's book and in a number of disciplines. In doing so, it aims to make three critical observations. First, while Eldridge rightly seeks to energize our sense of historical openness, the argument is usefully enriched by the adjacent field of political theory, where “boot‐strapping” is often paired with “self‐binding” to describe how self‐creating processes might be arrested and stabilized. Second, Eldridge's use focuses on individual dispositions, but the concept of “bootstrapping” points to the need to pursue understanding of collective processes of self‐institution. Third, when extended to the natural world, “bootstrapping” calls for scrutiny of the relationship between human self‐creation and nature as a site of emergence and self‐organizing phenomena.

Breitenbach, Angela. “The Beauty of Science with the Science of Beauty: Kant and the Rationalists on the Aesthetics of Cognition.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.2 (2018): 281-304. [M]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Claims about the beauty of theories and explanations are often inspired by the Platonic vision that beauty will lead us to truth. By contrast, Kant’s aesthetics is commonly regarded as providing the most influential critique of this vision. In this paper, I show that this popular contrast is mistaken in important respects. By examining Kant’s views in comparison with those of his immediate contemporaries, A. G. Baumgarten and G. F. Meier, I show that the Kantian position offers an important alternative to the Platonic ideal; namely, a conception of the beauty of science that is independent of the science of beauty.

Brook, Andrew. “The Deduction: Some Suggestions for Future Work.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 89-97. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Since I agree with Schulting’s conclusions, my comments consist mostly of suggestions for further work that he could do, for example further issues that he might want to look into and passages that might give him trouble. One such issue is what is now sometimes called the Localization Problem: if the mind supplies temporal and (where present) spatial organization and most (at least most) conceptual structure to the manifold of intuition, what could be used to place bits of the manifold at one place rather than another, to determine that this concept rather than that applies, and the like? I urge that this in fact a very serious problem for Kant. Among passages that might create a problem for Schulting’s reading, I focus on the Refutation of Idealism, which Kant added to the second (B-)edition.

Bunte, Martin. “Absolute Spontaneity and Self-Determination: The Fact of Reason and the Categories of Freedom.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 123-36. [PW]

Bykova, Marina F. “Kant’s Problems with Freedom and Fichte’s Response to the Challenge.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 137-56. [PW]

[top] C[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Callanan, John J. “Methodological Conservativism in Kant and Strawson.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (online: 19 Jun 2018): pages. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics are both examples of what I call methodological conservativism. Methodological conservativism involves the claim that a subset of common first-order beliefs is immune to revision. I argue that there are striking differences between their respective commitments to this position, however. For Kant, his conservativism is based upon a commitment to the reliability of particular results of the sciences of his day. For Strawson, in contrast, his conservativism is based upon his attempted liberation of arguments for the necessity of a certain conceptual scheme from any particular scientific commitments. In fact, for Strawson, no change in scientific commitments could displace the conceptual scheme employed to navigate the manifest world of ordinary perceptual experience. Each approach brings with it challenges with regard to how to accommodate potential scientific theory change.

Caranti, Luigi. “Reply to my critics.” Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 110-16. [M] [online]

Castillo, Monique. “How Does the Kantian Idea of History Anticipate, in 1784, Its Own Realization?” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3 (posted 15 Jun 2018): 1-9. [M] [online]

Cavallar, Georg. Rev. of Toward Kantian Cosmopolitanism, by Lorena Cebolla Sanahuja (2017). Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 343-46. [PW]

Cesar Martin, Pablo. “Freedom of Imagination as Foundation for Aesthetic Judgement and Teleological Judgement.” Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 187-92. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant divides philosophy into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. Theoretical philosophy tackles the study of nature, while practical philosophy tackles morality. Both spheres of knowledge remain separated from each other. The Critique of Judgement aims to join both spheres through reflective judgement. Reflective judgement has two variants: the judgement of taste and teleological judgement. In the judgement of taste freedom of the imagination allows artistic creation and in doing so, it also allows man to contemplate nature according to ends. In both variants of reflective judgement, the freedom of imagination is the necessary condition, which allows man to create art or to contemplate nature according to an end which embraces the whole nature. In our paper we try to demonstrate that without freedom of imagination, reflective judgement could not take place.

Champagne, Mark. “Kantian Schemata: A Critique Consistent with the Critique.” Philosophical Investigations 41.4 (2018): 436-45. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third‐man regress. Siding with those who think that the mid‐way posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyse a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.

Chance, Brian A. “Wolff’s Empirical Psychology and the Structure of the Transcendental Logic.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 17-34. [PW]

Chiurazzi, Gaetano. “Kant’s Revolutionary Metaphysics as a New Policy of Reason.” Vol. 70 (Renaissance and Modern Philosophy): 5-9. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] [This paper also appears in vol. 23 (Metaphysics), pp. 29-33.] Kant’s critical project has been understood as a description of the functioning of knowledge (Strawson). Such an understanding of the first Critique seems however limited, especially if we consider Kant’s frequent use of political analogies. These analogies suggest another reading in which Kant’s critical project emerges as an attempt to overcome a state of nature in reason (marked by unavoidable conflict) through the institution of a legal state in and by reason itself. Seen in this perspective, Kant’s critical metaphysics can be considered revolutionary, because it assumes the issues of the two revolutions of modernity, the political and the scientific one: from the former, Kant adopts the conviction that a conflict can be settled only through the separation and reciprocal limitation of powers, as theorized by Locke and Montesquieu - and thus neither by force nor by the establishment of an absolute power; from the latter, he acquires a model of proof, which is based, not on description, but on the elaboration of an explicative hypothesis (of a condition of possibility). The Critique of Pure Reason, then, is not a mere treatise of epistemology or of descriptive metaphysics, but the attempt of setting up a policy of reason at the service of peace and civil communal life.

Choi, Yoon. “New Work on Kant (II): Kant and the Philosophy of Mind.” Critique (blog posted: 1 Jul 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Claussen, Tor. “Kant i lys av den «lingvistiske vending». Hva om Kant fortolkes alternativt?” [Norwegian] Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift 53.1 (2018): 28-39. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract]

Clem, Stewart. “Dropping the Debt: A New Conundrum in Kant’s Rational Religion.” Religious Studies 54.1 (2018): 131-45. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this article, I argue that Immanuel Kant fails to provide a satisfactory account of ‘moral debt’ in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. More precisely, he fails to answer the question of why we should assume that a debt exists in the first place. In light of recent scholarship on this area of his thought, I sketch some possible readings of Kant on the nature of moral transformation that suggest how he might account for this debt. I then argue that these accounts fail to justify its existence within Kant's project.

Clewis, Robert R. “Beauty and Utility in Kant’s Aesthetics: The Origins of Adherent Beauty.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.2 (2018): 305-36. [M]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper describes one ancient model and three eighteenth-century accounts of the relation between beauty and goodness, including utility. Several modern philosophers, including Kant, can be understood in terms of these historical models. Like Hume and Sulzer, Kant distinguished two kinds of beauty: free and purpose-based. An examination of purpose-based beauty reveals how Kant handled the relation between beauty and utility. In all phases of his aesthetics, Kant’s account is best characterized as “unificationist”: beauty and utility are distinct concepts that can be conjoined or unified. Purpose-based beauty was central to Kant’s earlier aesthetics and, even after a notable conceptual shift, was retained in the form of ‘adherent’ beauty in his later account; it continued to be important for his mature aesthetics, and indeed is appealed to in discussions in contemporary aesthetics.

 ——. “Kant’s Physical Geography and the Critical Philosophy.” Epoche 22.2 (2018): 411-27. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant’s geographical theory, which was informed by contemporary travel reports, diaries, and journals, developed before his so-called “critical turn.” There are several reasons to study Kant’s lectures and material on geography. The geography provided Kant with terms, concepts, and metaphors which he employed in order to present or elucidate the critical philosophy. Some of the germs of what would become Kant’s critical philosophy can already be detected in the geography course. Finally, Kant’s geography is also one (though not the only) source of some of the empirical claims in his philosophical works, including the Critique of the Power of Judgment. To give an example of this, I examine his account of the sublime.

 ——. “Nature, Religion, and Imagination: Comments on Images of History.” History and Theory 57.3 (2018): 419-25. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] After sharing some reflections, I raise three questions. The first asks about the role of nature and reason according to Kant's teleological history, and the extent to which Kant's essays written before the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) are “dogmatic,” as his phrase “aim of nature” might suggest. The second asks about Kant's “impure” ethics and the role of religion. What would Kantian religion look like today? The last question concerns the relation between images and ideas—a thornier issue than Kant's initial definitions of imagination and reason would seem to suggest.

Coate, Matthew. “‘Nothing but Nonsense’: A Kantian Account of Ugliness.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 51-70. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] What does it mean for something to be judged ugly? On Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment, an object judged beautiful brings about a ‘free play of the imagination and the understanding’, and is thus given as though ‘purposive without purpose’; but ugliness, Kant claims, is the ‘contrary to beauty’. Assuming Kant is correct on all counts, we would have to conclude that the object judged ugly would bring about a dynamic that is contrary to this ‘ free play’, but that is nevertheless not its mere absence—since its absence is what is exhibited in usual cognitive, non-aesthetic judgment. Likewise, an ugly object is one that would have to be given as though contrapurposive, yet without running counter to any specific end of ours. In this essay, I try to clear up what this can mean, in order to clarify the judgment of ugliness.

Cohen, Alix.  “Kant on Moral Feelings, Moral Desires and the Cultivation of Virtue.”  Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 3-18. [PW]

 ——. “Kant on science and normativity.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 6-12. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] The aim of this paper is to explore Kant's account of normativity through the prism of the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. Although the pragmatic orientation of the human sciences is often defined in contrast with the theoretical orientation of the natural sciences, I show that they are in fact regulated by one and the same norm, namely reason's demand for autonomy.

Conceição, Jorge Vanderlei Costa da. “O problema do mal na Religião nos limites da simples razão.” [Portuguese; The problem of evil in the Religion in the limits of the simple reason] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 252-74. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The present article aims to demonstrate that the proposition "the man is evil by nature" is synthetic to the practical a priori, once that, the third degree of propensity, the malignancy is about a anthropological characteristic of the intelligible character of the finite rational being. To validate our interpretive hypothesis, we will affirm that the first two degrees of propensity, the fragility and the impurity, deal with the sensible character of the human being, because he is overdetermined either by the inclination, either by the moral law, but that does not mean that the man admitted the inclination as a rule of its will, but only its difficulty of dealing with these different motives in the execution of the action. Different from these levels, the malignancy presupposes an admission of the inclination as an universal rule of the will and according to Kant this act of will is intelligible and cognizable only by reason, because he aims to make feasible the predication of the human nature as evil, what may not occur through any empirical anthropological characteristic, but only through predication of the intelligible character of the finite rational being. For this reason, we will defend that the proposition "the man is evil by nature" is synthetic to the practical a priori.

Cooper, Andrew. “Kants Theorie der Biologie: Ein Kommentar. Eine Lesart. Eine Historische Einordnung.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.3 (2018): 625-30. [PI]

Costantini, Marco. “Le patologie psichiche nel Versuch kantiano del 1764.” [Italian; Psychopathologies in Kant’s 1764 Versuch] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 234-51. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This contribution consists of two parts. The first aims to clarify the structure of the nosology of psychopathologies that Kant proposes in the Versuck über die Krankheiten des Kopfes. Such nosology consists of two series, arranged in ascending order, one relating to the social manifestations of madness, the other to its individual manifestations, which specifically concern the faculties of the soul. We will try to demonstrate the existence of a connection between these two series, and to illustrate how this occurs. The second part of the contribution, on the other hand, intends to question the thesis according to which Kant in his Versuch provided a social aetiology of psychopathologies. We will show, in spite of this thesis, how society creates conditions only for the manifestation of these pathologies, and not for their production, which must instead be sought in the body.

Crisp, Roger. “Moral Rationalism and Demandingness in Kant: A Response to van Ackeren and Sticker.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 429-33. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Because my time and competence are limited, I shall avoid exegetical discussion of Kant and restrict myself to discussion of some of the apparent implications of the views attributed to Kant by van Ackeren and Sticker (AS) in their insightful and suggestive article.

Croitoru, Rodica. “Platonic Idea and Transcendental Idea as Investigation and Opening to Life.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 19-23. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Thinking of the system of rational ideas as extensions of conceiving, Kant deemed as necessary to pay his respects to Plato, the first who mapped out the philosophical career of those instruments of rational investigation. From the view of his transcendental idealism, he appreciated two elements: the utilization of ideas as a cognitive instrument distinct from senses, as well as the involvement of the human reason in their operationalization. Kant does not attach himself to the supra-individual force represented by the prototypes of things, because every source of knowledge excepting human faculties is deemed as devoid of any real ground. In consequence, the human faculty of reason is the one which gave Kant the opportunity to conceive the ideas of reason as investigations through systematic reflection, but also as an opening to three philosophical disciplines, which means three life options; among them especially the last one, aiming at the express orientation of life towards the moral faith, is a character modeler.

Cubo Ugarte, Oscar. Rev. of Kant und der Rechtsstaat und andere Essays zu Kants Rechtslehre und Ethik, by Joachim Hruschka (2015). Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 170-74. [PW]

Cunha, Bruno. “Kant e a sua Crítica a Hutcheson e à Doutrina do Sentimento Moral na Década de 1770.” [Portuguese] Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 74.1 (2018): 309-26. [PW]

 ——. “Kant e Rousseau: religião e teodiceia nas Anotações nas Observações sobre o Sentimento do Belo e do Sublime.” [Portuguese; Kant and Rousseau: religion and theodicy in Remarks on the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 5-23. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Highlighting the debate with Rousseau, my objective in this paper is to stress, through the analysis of some of these Notes and with the aid of some passages of other texts, the new Kant`s conceptions on the religion and theodicy in the middle of 1760. Specifically, I try to show that by critically appropriating Rousseau's thought, Kant is led to the first formulations of an innovative answer to the questions of moral evil and God's justice. This answer will result in the rupture with Leibniz and consequently in the contours more essential of the ethics and philosophy of religion which will appear as definitive philosophical doctrines in Kant`s maturity.

Cureton, Adam. “Reasonable Hope in Kant’s Ethics.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 181-203. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The most apparent obstacles to a just, enlightened and peaceful social world are also, according to Kant, nature’s way of compelling us to realize those and other morally good ends. Echoing Adam Smith’s idea of the ‘invisible hand’, Kant thinks that selfishness, rivalry, quarrelsomeness, vanity, jealousy and self-conceit, along with the oppressive social inequalities they tend to produce, drive us to perfect our talents, develop culture, approach enlightenment and, through the strife and instability caused by our unsocial sociability, push us towards justice, political equality and the highest good. What are we to make of these arguments, which seem to rely on questionable empirical assumptions, invoke dubious claims about natural teleology and sit uncomfortably with fundamental aspects of Kant’s ethical framework? I suggest that the arguments reveal one of Kant’s deep and important insights about the moral life by partially describing what a good and virtuous person reasonably hopes for.

[top] D[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

da Costa, Rafaella Silveira Sucupira. “A teoria da educação de immanuel kant e o aperfeiçoamento moral.” [Portuguese; Immanuel Kant's Theory od Education and Moral Improvement] Intuitio 11.2 (2018): 66-86. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article intends to analyze the theory of the education of the philosopher Immanuel Kant in order to understand how education can play an essential role in the perfection of human nature with morality ends. Therefore, we start from the following hypothesis: education, when based on the ideal of humanity, is the key to the moral perfection of man as a human species. To this end, we divide our article into two sections. In the first section, called the theory of Kantian education, we aspire to analyze the theory of Kantian education in its physical and practical aspects. In the second section, the pedagogy of enlightenment, we intend to understand how Kantian pedagogy can contribute to the realization of the autonomy of thought and moral enlightenment. Therefore, we will try to defend the hypothesis that a model of education is possible for the moral progress of human nature.

Dahan, Roit. “The Individual between Reason and Inclination: Marcuse’s Critique of Freud and Kant.” Vol. 12 (Ethics): 85-90. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Marcuse critiques the positions of Kant and Freud regarding the emancipation of reason. According to Kant and Freud, the individual attains autonomy via reason and consciousness. Marcuse claims that the concept of rationalism is rooted in the same social order that created the oppression! Thus, we must re-examine that concept in order to establish freedom and happiness. Marcuse believes that reason, in its accepted sense in Western philosophy, does not confer immunity from manipulation of consciousness. Reason’s advanced achievements do not lead to liberation; in fact, they lead to unnecessary oppression and suffering. Thus, we must establish freedom in a completely different dimension – one that will be the foundation for the reorganization of society. In this paper I will argue that Marcuse’s ideas regarding a new social order are not necessarily utopian. According to Marcuse, a change in the conception of a rational life style is necessary for the achievement of a true, free consciousness. Thus, a new social order, that aspires to reducing the time spent on alienating work alongside enlarging leisure time and deepening interpersonal relations, will create possible conditions to proceeds towards freedom and peace.

Dahlstrom, Daniel O. “Truth, Knowledge, and “the Pretensions of Idealism”: A Critical Commentary on the First Part of Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): pages. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Whereas research on Moses Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours has largely focused on the proofs for the existence of God and the elaboration of a purified pantheism in the Second Part of the text, scholars have paid far less attention to the First Part where Mendelssohn details his mature epistemology and conceptions of truth. In an attempt to contribute to remedying this situation, the present article critically examines his account, in the First Part, of different types of truth, different types of knowledge, and the case against idealism. The examination stresses potential but overlooked strengths of his account (e. g., a conception of immediate knowledge that is both far broader than the sensory field and distinctive for having change as its object), questions of ambiguity if not inconsistency in his concepts of existence and substance, and the potential import of these questions for the role he assigns to common sense.

Davis, Ryan W. “Frontier Kantianism: Autonomy and Authority in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Joseph Smith.” Journal of Religious Ethics 46.2 (2018): 332-59. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Ralph Waldo Emerson is often seen as the early American prophet of autonomy. This essay suggests a perhaps surprising fellow traveler in this prophetic call: Joseph Smith. Smith opposed religious creeds for the same reason that Emerson denounced them, namely that creeds represent a threat to the autonomy of a person's beliefs. Smith and Emerson also forward similar defenses of individual autonomy in action. Furthermore, they encounter a shared problem: how can autonomy be possible in a society where other individuals hold some kind of authority? I propose that each thinker resolves this tension through an insight with a Kantian echo. A suitably qualified version of authority can sometimes count as an expression of, rather than hindrance to, autonomy. I describe the overlap in Emerson and Smith as a “frontier” version of Kantianism. They favor determining one's own beliefs and actions in a way that looks forward to an open future of possibility.

De Bianchi, Silvia. “Introduction to Kant’s philosophy of science: Bridging the gap between the natural and the human sciences.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 1-5. [PI]

 ——. “The stage on which our ingenious play is performed: Kant’s epistemology of Weltkenntnis.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 58-66. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] This paper focuses on Kant's account of physical geography and his theory of the Earth. In spelling out the epistemological foundations of Kant's physical geography, the paper examines 1) their connection to the mode of holding-to-be-true, mathematical construction and empirical certainty and 2) their implications for Kant's view of cosmopolitan right. Moreover, by showing the role played by the mathematical model of the Earth for the foundations of Kant's Doctrine of Right, the exact relationship between the latter and physical geography is highlighted. Finally, this paper shows how, in Kant's view, the progress of physical geography can be assured if and only if the free circulation of human beings is established and regulated by law. Therefore, examining the mutual relationship between the theory of Earth and the foundations of right opens new perspectives on the relationship between epistemology and practical philosophy within Kant's system. Highlights • Clarifies Kant's view of physical geography as pragmatic knowledge of the world. • Identifies the main epistemological aspects of Kant's conception of scientific investigation based on empirical certainty. • Sheds light on the connection of Kant's physical geography to the Metaphysics of Morals.

de Boer, Karin. “Staking out the Terrain of Pure Reason: Kant’s Critique of Wolffian Metaphysics in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.” Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus 14 (2018): pages??. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] While Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) is generally considered to stem from an empiricist phase of Kant’s development, this article contends that Kant in this text elaborates a critique of Wolffian metaphysics not because of its rationalism, but because of its assumption that the sensible and the intellectual constitute a continuum. After presenting Wolff’s continuist account of empirical and rational psychology and metaphysical cognition as such, I focus on Kant’s implicit and explicit engagement with Wolff in Dreams with the aim of arguing that the text testifies to his sustained effort to identify and set free the rational core of Wolffian metaphysics.

 ——. “Kants radicaliteit. Een reactie op Schultings Kant’s Radical Subjectivism.” [Dutch] Tijdschrift voor Filosofie vol (2018): pages??. [PW]

 ——, and Stephen Howard. “A Ground Completely Overgrown: Heidegger, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (published online: 16 Apr 2018). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt, and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not allow him to account for Kant’s critique of the metaphysical tradition.

De Federicis, Nico. “Kant and Political Philosophy.” Vol. 69 (Political Philosophy): 99-104. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper discusses Kant’s dealing with a fundamental of modern politics, that is, the concept of sovereignty, as well as its own capacity to reshape political order. Overcoming failures and fallacies that traditionally such a concept has maintained, Kant’s political philosophy focuses on the way to reach international peace institutionally. Starting from the discussion of contradiction in sovereignty, the paper briefly analyzes the analogy between individuals and states; finally, core elements of Kant’s cosmopolitan thought will be presented. Kant’s project basically seeks to rewrite the early modern relation between politics and philosophy promoting republicanism, which is, mainly, a theory that shares state’s powers and defends representation. Extending such a political way from domestic to a world domain, Kant’s final solution for a World Republic implies a change of paradigm (though not completely expounded), by which modern sovereignty gets reassessed into a blended institutionalized coercion that emphasizes vertical power-sharing, so it realizes a cosmopolitan model of world order.

Díaz Marsá, Marco. “Apariencia autónoma y corrección cultural. Kant ante el problema de la ilusión antropológica. [Spanish; Autonomous appearance and cultural correction. Kant and the problem of the anthropological illusion] [ Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 184-204. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The aim of this article is to clarify, in the framework of the study of Kant's Critique of Judgment, what kind of connection exists between Kantian critical device and what Michael Foucault has named as "anthopological illusion", understood as a new figure of "transcendental appearance".

D’Oro, Giuseppina. “Between ontological hubris and epistemic humility: Collingwood, Kant and the role of transcendental arguments.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (published online: 21 Jun 2018). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper explores and defends a form of transcendental argument that is neither bold in its attempt to answer the sceptic, as ambitious transcendental strategies, nor epistemically humble, as modest transcendental strategies. While ambitious transcendental strategies seek (but fail) to meet the sceptical challenge, and modest transcendental strategies accept the validity of the challenge but retreat to a position of epistemic humility, this form of transcendental argument denies the assumption that undergirds the challenge, namely that truth and falsity may be legitimately predicated of the conditions of knowledge. As a result, although this form of transcendental argument is not truth-directed, it is not vulnerable to a charge that is often levelled against modest transcendental arguments, namely that they amount to the adoption of a strategy of sophisticated capitulation. This form of transcendental argument, which is implicit in Collingwood’s conception of philosophy as the search for absolute presuppositions, takes transcendental arguments in a pragmatic direction that does not leave the framework of transcendental idealism intact. It nonetheless remains true to Kant’s conception of philosophy as a second-order activity and to his goal of defending our entitlement to hold on both to the standpoint of theoretical and that of practical reason.

Dybel, Paweł. “Niebo gwiaździste nad Królewcem a prawo moralne. Dyskusja Gadamera z estetyką Kanta wokół kwestii doświadczenia piękna i jego odniesienia do etyki.” [Polish; The Starry Sky above Koenigsberg and the Moral Law. H.G. Gadamer’s Debate with I. Kant Concering the Experience of Beauty and Its Relatedness to Ethics] Diametros 55 (2018): 112-31. [PW] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the article, I engage with H.G.Gadamer’s reading of Kant’s aesthetic theory. Gadamer accused Kant of subjectivizing the aesthetic experience so that it would be reduced to the free play of the cognitive faculties of the subject. Consequently, the ethical dimension of aesthetic experience that played such an important role in the preceding tradition of European humanism has been lost. Yet, this charge of Gadamer is not quite right. The connection between the experience of beauty and ethics has been maintained by Kant, but it has assumed a different form. The free, disinterested beauty of the objects of nature, on his account, harmonizes with the disinterested experience of the moral law. Similarly, the dependent beauty of the work of art appeals to the ethical dimension of the human being. As a result of this, the connection between aesthetics and ethics not only has not been severed by Kant, but it has also assumed an entirely new, radical form.

Dyck, Corey. “G. F. Meier and Kant on the Belief in the Immortality of the Soul.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 76-93. [PW]

 ——. “The Spinozan-Wolffian Philosophy? Mendelssohn’s Philosophical Dialogues of 1755.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 251-69. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Mendelssohn’s Philosophische Gespräche (Philosophical Dialogues), first published in 1755, represents his first philosophical work in German and rather surprisingly for a debut, in the first two dialogues of that work Mendelssohn attempts nothing less than a defense of the legacy of the most controversial philosopher of his day, Benedict de Spinoza. In this paper, I attempt to enlarge the context, and if possible to raise the stakes, of Mendelssohn’s discussion in order to bring out what I take to be a much more ambitious project on Mendelssohn’s part, namely, not only the rehabilitation of a fellow Jewish thinker but also the rehabilitation of metaphysics as such by means of a thorough accounting of the Spinozan elements in the Wolffian philosophy. As I will show, framing the project of the Gespräche too narrowly is responsible for obscuring much of what I take to be most original and insightful in Mendelssohn’s use and interpretation of Wolff’s thought, as well as his ultimate purpose in resolving what he regarded as an ongoing crisis in metaphysics that is responsible to no small extent for its widespread neglect.

 ——, and Falk Wunderlich. “Introduction.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 1-14. [PW]

 ——, and Falk Wunderlich, eds. Kant and His German Contemporaries. Volume 1: Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xiv, 294 p.] [PW] [review]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Contents:
Brian A. Chance (Wolff’s Empirical Psychology and the Structure of the Transcendental Logic),
Huaping Lu-Adler (From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality: What Kant Did with Euler’s Circles),
Udo Thiel (Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self),
Corey W. Dyck (G. F. Meier and Kant on the Belief in the Immortality of the Soul),
Brandon C. Look (Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind),
Thomas Sturm (Lambert and Kant on Truth),
Paul Guyer (Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism),
Falk Wunderlich (Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique),
Eric Watkins (Lambert and Kant on Cognition (Erkenntnis) and Science (Wissenschaft)),
Jennifer Mensch (Kant and the Skull Collectors: German Anthropology from Blumenbach to Kant),
Paola Rumore (Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality),
Stefano Bacin (Kant and Feder on the Will, Happiness and the Aim of Moral Philosophy),
Heiner F. Klemme (The Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity: Garve’s Problem and Kant’s Solution).

 ——, and Heiner F. Klemme. “Introduction: The Philosophy of Moses Mendelssohn - Die Philosophie von Moses Mendelssohn.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 249-50. [PW]

[top] E[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Edwards, Jeffrey. Autonomy, Moral Worth, and Right: Kant on Obligatory Ends, Respect for Law, and Original Acquisition. Berlin / Boston: DeGruyter, 2018. [xvi, 353 p.] [WC]

[Note] [Hide Note] Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte, vol. 198.

Eisinger Guimarães, Rômulo. “Onde (não) entram voz universal e sensus communis nos juízos-de-gosto?” [Portuguese; Where universal voice and sensus communis (don't) enter into judgments-of-taste?] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 75-101. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Be one of the tasks of Critique of Judgment the groundwork of a faculty that, as Understanding and Reason, has its principles a priori to legislate. By virtue of this groundwork assigns Kant to Judgment – and to the feeling of pleasure involved in judgments-of-taste – universal validity. However, amid the second moment of Analytic of the Beautiful affirms Kant that one, who utters judgments-of-taste, “believes oneself to have a universal voice (which is based on a sensus communis), and lays claim to the consent of everyone” (KU, AA 05: 216). So, universal voice and sensus communis seems to collide with transcendental groundwork: because either we claim universality thanks to transcendental location, or because, by uttering such judgments, we believe to hear a universal voice. This paper deals with some obscurities of Kant’s arguments pertaining to universal voice and sensus communis, in an attempt to situate them in the third Critique context.

Eldridge, Richard. “Précis Images of History: Kant, Benjamin, Freedom, and the Human Subject.” History and Theory 57.3 (2018): 408-12. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] My fundamental motivation in writing Images of History was to avoid some forms of hubris and despair that trouble contemporary philosophy and to develop instead a picture of human life in historical time. According to this picture, we live amid institutional and practical inheritances we can address but can never fully stabilize and perfect. In different ways, Kant and Benjamin each accept this thought, and they each develop a picture of philosophy as historically situated, open criticism of existing practices and institutions. Each emphasizes the priority of the practical over any fixed metaphysical‐theoretical stance. I survey each of their general theories of critical historical understanding, and I pay special attention to the texts in which they each provide detailed, specific accounts of Western social‐historical development or circumstances: Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Benjamin's One‐Way Street. Where Kant's philosophical criticism is reformist, liberal, and casually dismissive of non‐Christian religion, Benjamin's is modernist, erotic, and improvisatory. Their respective images of history according to which we achieve orientation are both complementary and fundamentally opposed—not readily combinable into a consistent whole. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Lear, I end with a picture of maturity and practical self‐unity as centrally a matter of developing the skill of modulated alternation between these two orientation‐affording images.

 ——. “Replies to Comments on Images of History by Warren Breckman, Robert R. Clewis, and Espen Hammer.” History and Theory 57.3 (2018): 431-37. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In my replies to the perceptive and cogent observations and questions about my book offered by Warren Breckman, Robert Clewis, and Espen Hammer, I emphasize the thought that we must learn to live with standing tensions between settled institutions and improvisatory courses of action. In reply to Breckman, I suggest that Münchhausen's Trilemma is best regarded as a practical problem that should be addressed in different ways in different contexts rather than as an epistemological puzzle to be solved, and I embrace his rejection of methodological individualism. Although our evolved biology sets some limits and some possibilities, our practical lives are also relatively autonomous from biological determination. In reply to Robert Clewis, I emphasize that Kant has a picture of divine noumenal causation, dimly discernible in history and operating principally through human beings as agents, and I suggest, with Kant, that we may well be unable to explain in any satisfactory way the nature of this noumenal causation. In reply to Espen Hammer's worries about whether a dialogue between Kant and Benjamin is really possible without doing violence to one side or the other, I stress that I am not myself trying to develop a single consistent theory of the meaning of history. Instead, I am “working through” my own perplexity at the constitutive tensions that shape human life, including my own, and trying to see those tensions more clearly.

Elon, Daniel. “Gottlob Ernst Schulzes skeptizistische Kant-Kritik in ihrer Relevanz für Arthur Schopenhauers Systemkonstitution.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 124-46. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In 1792, Gottlob E. Schulze published one of the most important treatises in the era of the early critical reception of Kant’s transcendental philosophy: the skeptical treatise Aenesidemus. One of Schulze’s later students was the young Arthur Schopenhauer, whose examination of Kant’s philosophy was significantly influenced by Schulze. In this paper, it shall be established that this influence isn’t limited solely to the details of Schopenhauer’s critique of Kantian thinking, but rather extends to the systematic unfolding of Schopenhauer’s philosophy as a whole. In this respect, Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation can be understood as a direct, positive answer to the questions left open by Schulze’s debate on the internal problems of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Engelhard, Kristina. “The problem of grounding natural modality in Kant’s account of empirical laws of nature.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 24-34. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] One of the central problems of Kant's account of the empirical laws of nature is: What grounds their necessity? In this article I discuss the three most important lines of interpretation and suggest a novel version of one of them. While the first interpretation takes the transcendental principles as the only sources of the empirical laws' necessity, the second interpretation takes the systematicity of the laws to guarantee their necessity. It is shown that both views involve serious problems. The third interpretation, the "causal powers interpretation", locates the source of the laws' necessity in the properties of natural objects. Although the second and third interpretations seem incompatible, I analyse why Kant held both views and I argue that they can be reconciled, because the metaphysical grounding project of the laws' necessity is accounted for by Kant's causal powers account, while his best system account explains our epistemic access to the empirical laws. If, however, causal powers are supposed to fulfil the grounding function for the laws' natural modality, then I suggest that a novel reading of the causal powers interpretation should be formulated along the lines of a genuine dispositionalist conception of the laws of nature. Highlights:
• Delineates the essential parts of Kant's account of the empirical laws of nature and its three main lines of interpretation.
• Argues for a genuine dispositionalist version of the causal powers interpretation.
• Shows that causal powers interpretations have to be complemented with a best system interpretation.
• Shows that both interpretations can be made compatible.

Englert, Alexander T. Rev. of The Highest Good in Kant’s Philosophy, edited by Thomas Höwing (2016). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 168-73. [PW]

Engstrom, Stephen. “Understanding Autonomy: Form and Content of Practical Knowledge.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 44-60. [M]

Ertl, Wolfgang. Rev. of Kants Ontologie der raumzeitlichen Wirklichkeit: Versuch einer anti-realistischen Interpretation der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, by Kiyoshi Chiba (2012). British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 218-21. [PW]

Everett, Jonathan. “A Kantian account of mathematical modelling and the rationality of scientific theory change: The role of the equivalence principle in the development of general relativity.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 45-57. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] Highlights • The role of the equivalence principle in the development of general relativity. • Identification of the role of conceptual analysis in this process. • Discussion of Cassirer's account of the rationality of scientific theory change. • Bolstering Cassirer's account through emphasising conceptual analysis.

[top] F[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Falsafi, Hossein. “Studying and Evaluating Kant’s Attitude towards Plato’s Ideas.” Vol. 8 (Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy): 49-53. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] One of the most fundamental thoughts is Plato’s ideas. Great philosophers after Plato have interpreted different ideas of Plato. Some of them are true and some of them are not. Kant also has special but untrue interpretation of Plato’s ideas. In this paper, first, critical philosophy of Kant is briefly reported and then, special look of Kant at ideas is studied and evaluated and it is made evident that Kant has misinterpreted Plato’s ideas.

Fan, Dahan. Die Problematik der Interesselosigkeit bei Kant. Eine Studie zur «Kritik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft». Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. [160 p.??] [PW]

[Note] [Hide Note] Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte, vol. 200.

Feloj, Serena. “Dall’idea di mondo all’idea di organismo: lo schematismo dell’uso regolativo della ragione.” [Italian; From the Idea of World to the Idea of Organism: Schematism of the Regulative Use of Reason] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 473-87. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the Transcendental Dialectic Kant announces a deduction of rational ideas that is needed if ideas have to be endowed with objective, even if indeterminate, validity. This deduction is aimed to be a kind of transcendental schematism, but it is only announced and scheduled and not accomplished. The paragraphs 61-68 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment seem to be an accomplishment of Kant’s program, giving reality to a schematism of the regulative use of reason. The thesis I support states that it is actually possible to compare the two definition of regulative idea, given in the first and in the third Critique, but we have also to keep in mind the evolution in Kant’s thought, moving from the idea of world to the idea of organism. Based on this conviction, I will state that the idea of organism grounds the constitutive use of the judgment on nature and allows an application of the principle of causality to natural sciences. It isn’t however the regulative idea to be subordinated to the constitutive judgment; it is rather the ideal use of the notion of nature to logically forerun the categorical synthesis.

Ferrarin, Alfredo. “Reply to Magrì and Frilli.” Critique (blog posted: 19 Feb 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Ferreiro Lago, Sara. Rev. of Kant on Love, by Pärttyli Rinne (2018). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 579-85. [M] [online]

Ferrero Martínez, Carlos Javier. “Dynamics of the Sublime: A Way into the Wild.” Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 73-77. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The Kantian notion of sublime is taken to be a dynamic kind of feeling that human beings can experiment on/with. For example, when an alpinist is on a mountain, alone, at a snowy edge, close to the peak he wants to conquer or when he watches a sunrise; in these moments the alpinist realizes how wonderful the nature is, how incredible the world is, and he realizes that only a thin line separates that feeling and death. There is just a void over that edge, a scary fall for hundreds of meters. This paper suggests that the sublime is a consequence of the approach, through these kinds of activities, to the environment; a feeling that provides us with knowledge of the limitless and, most importantly, a knowledge of our human condition. In the mountaineering, as in other kinds of physical, exploratory activities, the sublime is possible due to the physical skill and the power of decision and adaptation to the hazards of being in an extreme situation. This paper also shows how, through these kinds of activities, the sublime is maintained in confrontation with the western “society of simulation” and the ideas of virtual experience and “safe experience”.

Ferrini, Cinzia. “Descartes’s Legacy in Kant’s Notions of Physical Influx and Space-Filling: True Estimation and Physical Monadology.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 9-46. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper examines Kant’s pre-Critical distinction between the capacity of an immaterial simple substance to occupy space by having a spatial location and the sphere of its activity, in contrast to the power of material compound bodies to fill space by their extension and solidity. I highlight some important features of Descartes’ metaphysical and physical models of the contingent locality of simple unextended substances and challenge the recently articulated view that Henry More’s model of extended but metaphysically indivisible spirits is an archetype for, or at least a precursor to, Kant’s dynamic monads. I claim that, contra More and the Newtonians, Kant is indebted to Descartes for this idea of how simple substances take up space and can be extended in an ‘analogous’ way by means of the effects of their activity.

Feuerhahn, Niels. Rev. of Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Mary Gregor (2015). Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 57.3 (2018): 646-48. [PW]

Filho, Edgard José Jorge. “Concerning the Proof of Freedom in Kant.” Vol. 12 (Ethics): 115-20. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason Kant claims to afford a proof of the objective reality of transcendental freedom, which can be found in the Analytic of this work. However, the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason had already established the impossibility of a legitimate theoretical proof of that reality. So, in this study I attempt to interpret the proof developed in the second Critique as a practical one. I consider, first, that this proof would not be a theoretical transcendental deduction. Then, I investigate what might be a practical proof, by means of inquiring into its conditions and their fulfillment. One of these conditions would require the reference of the Idea of freedom to an object not as a possible datum, but as a possible accomplishment of pure practical reason. A strong candidate for this object would be the feeling of respect for the law, whose origin is pure. Finally, I argue that the supposed practical proof of freedom is inconclusive.

Filieri, Luigi. “Natura e funzione delle idee trascendentali.” [Italian; Nature and Function of the Transcendental Ideas] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 392-409. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The aim of this paper is to identify two different but not unrelated accounts of the necessity of the transcendental ideas. On the one hand, such ideas derive from a natural necessity (a need) of reason; on the other, the ideas are necessary to organize the whole of empirical knowledge into a system. By using a terminological argument, it will be proven that these two perspectives relate to each other in order to both unify what is conditioned into unconditioned wholes and point reason towards the practical domain of freedom.

Fisher, Naomi. Rev. of I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant and Back Again, by Béatrice Longuenesse (2017). The Review of Metaphysics 71.4 (2018): 812-14. [PW]

Fleischacker, Samuel. Rev. of Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant (2017). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Feb 2018, #14). [M] [online]

Forschler, Scott. “The ‘Necessity’ Fallacy in Kantian Ethics.” Vol. 12 (Ethics): 121-25. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] A common strategy in ethical argumentation tries to derive ethical obligations from the rational necessity of not acting against certain “necessary” conditions for satisfying some good end. This strategy is very often fallacious, and works by equivocating over what counts as a “necessary” condition. Very often, what is counted as a necessary condition is not logically necessary for the end in question, but is at most related to it by affecting the probability of the end’s satisfaction. If other conditions affecting the probability of satisfying this (or similar) ends are then discounted as merely “instrumental” or “probabilistic” (in contrast to others imagined as being “necessary”), this strategy has the function of hypocritically privileging some of the arguer’s preferred values over others. We should instead recognize that nearly all conditions affecting the probability of satisfying some good end borrow some value from the value of the end, in proportion to how much they tend to affect its probability of satisfaction. The fallacy tends to support rigid deontological norms; once we abandon it, many arguments against consequentialism are revealed merely as special pleading. Many ethical arguments use this fallacy, but I focus here on its use by Immanuel Kant.

Forster, Michael N. “Free Will in Antiquity and in Kant.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 10-26. [PW]

Franceschet, Antonio. Rev. of Kant’s Embedded Cosmopolitanism: History, Philosophy, and Education for World Citizens, by Georg Cavallar (2015). Canadian Journal of Political Science 51.1 (2018): 187-88. [PI]

Frilli, Guido. “On Alfredo Ferrarin’s Il pensare e l’io. Hegel e la critica di Kant.” Critique (blog posted: 19 Feb 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Fozarova, Feruza. “Эстетическая Проблематика Иммануила Канта.” [Russian; Aesthetic Problems of Immanuel Kant] Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 421-26. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The most essential contribution to development of a philosophi­cal aesthetics, according to many experts, the largest representative of German classical philosophy Immanuel Kant has brought. In the Kant aesthetic views the Second, so-called critical, period of his creativity is most interesting, when he has created the most considerable works: Critique of pure reason (1781), Critique of practical reason (1788) and Critique of the power of judgment (1790). Unlike the predecessors-educators demonstrating a subject of aesthetics in objective reality, looking for the objective bases of beauty, Kant after Burke, and relying on development of psychological school of Wolf, didn’t think of the sphere aesthetic without the subject and his perception of object. Main for him category of esthetics are “expedient”, “taste”, “free game”, “beauty”, “sublime” the essence of the characteristic of aesthetic contemplation which is accompanied by special pleasure, or disinterested creative activity. Ability of Kant to understand clearly and present an originality of the art sphere explains attractiveness and authoritativeness of his aesthetics.

[top] G[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

García Mills, Nicolás. “Realizing the Good: Hegel's Critique of Kantian Morality.” European Journal of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 195-212. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Although the best‐known Hegelian objection against Kant's moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an ‘empty formalism’, Hegel's criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable ‘ought’ – in other words, the Kantian moral ‘ought’ can never become an ‘is’. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant's formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far‐reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions (between, for instance, reason and sensibility) of Kant's moral theory. I end by employing these more far‐reaching results of Hegel's objection to sketch some features of Hegel's alternative ethical view.

Gava, Gabriele. “C. I. Lewis, Kant, and the reflective method of philosophys.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (published online: 1 Mar 2018). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] If it seems unquestionable that C. I. Lewis is a Kantian in important respects, it is more difficult to determine what, if anything, is original about his Kantianism. For it might be argued that Lewis’ Kantianism simply reflects an approach to the a priori which was very common in the first half of the twentieth century, namely, the effort to make the a priori relative. In this paper, I will argue that Lewis’ Kantianism does present original features. The latter can be detected by focusing on Lewis’ account of the method of philosophy in the first chapter of Mind and the World Order. In that context, Lewis argues that the method of philosophy should be reflective and critical. It will be my contention that this understanding of philosophy involves a therapeutic perspective, which bears important resemblances to Kant’s account of transcendental reflection in the Amphiboly of the Critique of Pure Reason. I will illustrate how this therapeutic application of reflection works in Lewis’ metaphysics. In this context, reflection can correct errors of reasoning that occur when we are operating within a particular conceptual scheme and use the criteria of reality that are appropriate in another.

Geiger, Ido. See: Reiter, Aviv, and Ido Geiger.

Gironi, Fabio, ed. The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism. New York: Routledge, 2018. [vi, 239 p.] [WC]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Contents:
Fabio Gironi (Introduction),
James R. OShea (After Kant, Sellars, and Meillassoux: back to empirical realism?),
Aude Bandini (Sellars and Meillassoux: a most unlikely encounter),
Ray Brassier (Correlation, speculation, and the modal Kant-Sellars thesis),
Carl B. Sachs (Speculative materialism or pragmatic naturalism? Sellars contra Meillassoux),
Anna Longo (How to know that we know? the contemporary post-kantian problem of a priori synthetic judgments),
Dionysis Christias (Toward the thing-in itself: Sellars and Meillassouxs divergent conception of kantian transcendentalism),
Gabriel Catren (A plea for Narcissus. on the transcendental reflexion /\ refraction mediation tandem),
Joseph Cohen (Speculating the real: on quentin Meillassouxs philosophical realism),
Muhannad Hariri (It is not until we have eaten the apple: forestalling the necessity of contingency),
Daniel Sacilotto (Puncturing the circle of correlation: rationalism, materialism, and dialectics).

Glezer, Tal. Kant on Reality, Cause, and Force: From the Early Modern Tradition to the Critical Philosophy. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xv, 225 p.] [WC]

Golob, Sacha. “On Dennis Schulting’s Kant’s Radical Subjectivism.” Critique (blog posted: 20 May 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Gomes, Anil. “Minding the Gap: Subjectivism and the Deduction.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 99-109. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Chapter 4 of Dennis Schulting’s book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism targets those commentators who take there to be a gap in the transcendental deduction of the categories, arguing instead that there is no gap between the necessary application of the categories and their exemplification in the object of experience. In these comments on the chapter, I suggest a minimal sense in which the fact that there is a gap is non-negotiable. The interesting question is not whether there is a gap which needs to be bridged, but how and why Kant makes the step from subjectivity to objectivity.

Granja Castro, Dulce Maria. “El ingreso y la asimilación de la filosofía kantiana en México.” [Spanish; The entry and assimilation of Kantian philosophy in Mexico] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 14-45. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] From its earliest years as an independent nation, Mexico was by no means foreign to the presence and influence of Kantian philosophy. The Prussian philosopher’s thought was relevant in the theory of law, pedagogy, ethics and culture in general developed by Mexican intellectuals, politicians, educators and thinkers. Studying the process of entry and assimilation, as well as exegesis and criticism, of Kantian philosophy in Mexico, has an important meaning because it has to do with objective conditions of national character. How has Kantian thought felt in Mexican life? This is the question I am attempting to answer. It does not move me to anything but to recognize the efforts of all those who have helped to appropriate the legacy of the most important philosophy written in modern times.

Greenberg, Robert. “Kant’s Causal Theory of Action and the Freedom of the Will.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 47-43. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper presents an interpretation of Kant’s understanding of the concept of an action of a subject as an instance of a causal way he has of understanding certain other concepts as well, including his concept of appearance and that of event. I will call this way of understanding a concept “a causal theory” of the object so conceived, e.g. a causal theory of an action, an appearance, or an event, because the indicated concept logically requires the existence of an object as the cause of the existence of the object so conceived. The argument is that the theory I am attributing to Kant as his causal theory of action provides the basis for an interpretation of his theory of the freedom of the will that is integral to his moral philosophy. The paper thus starts with a general way of understanding his use of causal theory, continues with his understanding of the concepts of appearance, event, and action, thence to his theory of freedom, and concludes, briefly, with his theory of morality.

Gregory, Michael. Rev. of Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud, by Kojin Karatani, transl. by Jonathan E. Abel (2017). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 500-4. [PW]

Gressis, Robert. “Kant’s Theodicy and its Role in the Development of Radical Evil.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100.1 (2018): 46-75. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that rational beings should want to have no inclinations. But in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, he asserts that the inclinations are good in themselves. While many commentators hold that Kant simply wrote hyperbolically in the Groundwork and the second Critique, I argue Kant was sincere, and changed his mind about the worth of the inclinations between the second Critique and the Religion. This is because he changed his mind about the source of immorality: whereas in the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason Kant took our inclinations to be tempters, starting in “Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” and concluding in the Religion, he posited a self-imposed propensity to evil as the source of immorality. Kant’s reason for changing his mind about the source of immorality was partly theological: if our inclinations were to blame for immorality, then God would also be to blame for creating us with them. The only way God could not be to blame is if our immorality were self-imposed. But Kant also concluded that looking for theoretical explanations of our immorality – whether theological or naturalistic – was itself problematic: such explanations ended up exonerating us for our immorality. Because they had this effect, I contend that Kant saw the offering of such exculpating theoretical explanations as itself motivated by immorality. This understanding of Kant makes sense of the approaches he takes in both “Miscarriage” and Religion.

Gurevich, Tatiana. “Thomas de Quincey as the Disseminator of Kantian Traditions.” Vol. 34 (Philosophical Traditions in Europe): 43-49. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Great Britain of the first half of the XIXth century was experiencing strong influence of German philosophy and historiography - the ideas and traditions of F. Schelling, the Schlegel brothers and I. Herder. The most significant figure, who promoted the formation of the main English Romanticism concepts (in particular, the concept of “literary genius”) and determined the directions in the study approaches of science, was Immanuel Kant. Kantian traditions were being spread primarily due to English writers and translators, actively printed in the periodicals of that time - T. De Quincey, S. T. Coleridge, J. G. Lockhart, T. Carlyle and John A. Heraud. One of the main disseminators of Kantian traditions was a writer-essayist, the author of the famous “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”, Thomas De Quincey (1785-1854). The dissemination of Kantian ideas and traditions by Thomas de Quincey was expressed in four main directions: the translation of Kantian works into English, the expression and dissemination of Kantian ideas and traditions (mainly from translated works) in his creative works - essays and memoirs, the disclosure and analysis of the Kantian philosophy ideas in his own philosophical and theological essays, the creation of fiction, resuscitating the key moments of Kant’s philosophy and life.

Gutiérrez Aguilar, Ricardo. Virtud y Sistema. Juicio moral y filosofía de la Historia en Kant. [Spanish] Madrid: Ediciones Alamanda, 2018. [166 p.] [M] [online]

 ——. Rev. of Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant (2017). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 559-64. [M] [online]

Gutiérrez-Xivillé, Ana-Carolina. Kants ethischer Autonomiebegriff. Eine genetische Rekonstruktion von 1762 bis 1785. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. [xx, 468 p.] [PW]

[type] [Hide type] Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte, Band 205.

Guyer, Paul. “Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 134-54. [PW]

 ——. “Mendelssohn, Kant, and Religious Liberty.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 309-28. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Both Mendelssohn and Kant were strong supporters of the separation between church and state, but their arguments differed. Mendelssohn joined many others in following Locke in arguing that only freely arrived at conviction could be pleasing to God, so the state could not serve the purpose of religion in attempting to enforce it: a religious premise for religious liberty. Kant argued for religious liberty as an immediate consequence of the innate right to freedom. I suggest that Kant’s straightforward argument is worth recalling in the present attack on the separation of church and state in the US and elsewhere.

 ——. “The Struggle for Freedom: Freedom of Will in Kant and Reinhold.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 120-37. [M]

 ——.  “Moral Worth and Moral Motivation: Kant’s Real View.”  Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 19-38. [PW]

[top] H[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Haiyan, Zhang. ““Good by Beauty” or “Unification of Beauty and Good”: Comparison of Aesthetic Status in Kant’s and Mou Zong-san’s Theory.” [Chinese] Vol. 9 (Confucian Philosophy): 115-20. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Both Kant’s and Mou Zong-san’s aesthetics have its own moral idea. The central concept of Kant’s theory (free will) is only a postulate by which beauty connects nature and freedom and beauty can be free of the dependency of good. Kant’s great works “Three Critics” reveal that and emphasize on the independency of beauty, which regards beauty as the intermedium of “Beauty by Good”. But the central concept of Mou Zong-san’s moral metaphysics (goodness) is the noumenon of “Unification of Noumenon and Function”. It means the dependency of objectivity on subjectivity, transcendent on empirical, then beauty have the moral connotation and the meaning of empirical experiences. Beauty is brought into the field of goodness and loses its independency, and then beauty is united into morality and under the shadow of good. In conclusion, Kant’s theory unfolds the western tradition of reason and Mou Zon-san’s theory unfolds the oneness of Chinese tradition.

Hammer, Espen. “Reason, Agency, and History: Remarks on Kant and Benjamin.” History and Theory 57.3 (2018): 426-30. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This essay begins by determining the nature of Richard Eldridge's project. Referring mainly to writings by Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, I view his attempt as considering what it involves to be an agent in a historical setting. According to Eldridge, the correct answer will have to involve the right combination of Kant's emphasis on rational self‐determination and Benjamin's account of spontaneous (yet nonrational) self‐transformation. In response to this answer, I suggest that Benjamin's view may not easily lend itself to being made compatible with Kantian thinking. In particular, Benjamin's effort to thinkexperience in terms that do not make any reference to rational self‐determination must be viewed as deeply foreign to Kant's project. I also argue that Kant's third Critique, in particular its conception of reflective judgment, could have provided Eldridge with a view of agency and experience that does not deviate substantially from Kant's project elsewhere. At the end of the essay, I argue that the duality we find in Eldridge's exposition should be viewed as not only related to individuals but to society in general. An attempt to resolve it must involve reflection on how historically constituted social forms create such stark oppositions between reason and its other.

Hanna, Robert. “Kant and Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered.” Critique (blog posted: 25 Feb 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

 ——. Rev. of Excessive Subjectivity — Kant, Hegel, Lacan, and the Foundations of Ethics, by Dominik Finkelde, transl. by Deva Kemmis and Astrid Weigert (2017). The Review of Metaphysics 71.4 (2018): 805-6. [M]

Hasan, Rafeeq. “The provisionality of property rights in Kant’s Doctrine of Right.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48.6 (2018): 850-76. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant’s claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature. Weak provisionality holds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast, strong provisionality holds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view, anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined.

Head, Jonathan. Rev. of The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer’s Pessimism, by Dennis vanden Auweele (2017). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 173-78. [PW]

Hebbeler, James. Rev. of Karl Leonhard Reinhold: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 12: Vorlesungsnachschriften: Logik und Metaphysik, Darstellung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, edited by Faustino Fabbianelli und Erich H. Fuchs (2015). Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 174-78. [PW]

Heidemann, Dietmar H. “Der Raum ist kein empirischer Begriff. Zu Kants erstem Raumargument.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 19-43. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The paper discusses Kant’s first argument from space in the Critique of Pure Reason. It argues that, contrary to what parts of the literature have claimed, the argument provides convincing reasons for the view that in order to locate objects in space outside us we must already presuppose the idea of space such that it cannot be borrowed from the objects perceived in space. The paper shows how the argument can be made transparent not only by clarifying Kant’s usage of “distinct from” and “ausser uns” but also by retracing its main idea back to the 1768 essay “Concerning the Ultimate Foundation of the Differentiation of Regions in Space” and its incongruent counterparts argument.

Heintel, Peter. Rev. of Das Sollen und das Böse in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants. Zum Zusammenhang zwischen kategorischem Imperativ und dem Hang zum Bösen, by Jakub Sirovátka (2015). Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 352-56. [PW]

Herbert, Gary B. “Bringing Morality to Justice: The Juridical Applicability of the Supreme Principle of Kantian Morality.” International Philosophical Quarterly 58.1 (2018): 61-78. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant suggests that moral metaphysics can be shown to be politically applicable by thinking of the analogically similar applicability of the principles of speculative reason to the external world of sense experience. Just as the categories of understanding, e.g., causality, substance, and so on must be schematized, i.e., given a temporal representation in order to be made applicable to the forms of sensuous intuitions, so also the principles of morality—most especially the idea of the autonomous will—must be schematized to be made politically applicable. The paper shows how Kant employs his schematism in metaphysics to make the principles of morality applicable to political experience and concludes with observations on the moral and political implications of a politics that pays homage to Kantian morality.

Hereza Modrego, David. Rev. of Conciencia y representación. Una introducción a Reinhold, by Juan Cruz Cruz (2017). [Spanish] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 117-18. [M] [online]

Herman, Barbara. “We Are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s Ethics.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 174-91. [M]

Herrero Olivera, Laura. Rev. of Sincerity in Politics and International Relations, by Soren Baiasu and Sylvie Loraux (2017). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 552-58. [M] [online]

Herszenbaun, Miguel Alejandro. La antinomia de la razón pura en Kant y Hegel. [Spanish] Madrid: Ediciones Alamanda, 2018. [603 p.] [M] [online]

 ——. “La lectura hegeliana de la apercepción trascendental kantiana como una crítica y reelaboración de la lógica trascendental de Kant.” [Spanish; Hegel’s Interpretation of the Kantian Transcendental Apperception as a Critique and Reelaboration of Kant’s Transcendental Logic] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 60-88. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The following paper intends to study Hegel’s reception of the Kantian transcendental apperception. This study will allow us understand Hegel’s critique against Kant’s conception of the apperception, Hegel’s appropriation of the apperception and how Hegel uses it to promote a critique against transcendental logic as a whole. I claim that Hegel’s approach on apperception involves several aspects: First, revealing the true philosophical meaning that Kant had not adverted to in his discovery of apperception. Second, showing that transcendental logic implies an incomplete conception of pure categories and pure thought. Third, I intend to prove that by studying Hegel’s approach on the transcendental apperception as a critique to transcendental logic allows us understand Hegel’s own speculative logic as a reelaboration of the epistemological limits of pure thought and the conception of the object of knowledge.

 ——, and Luciana Martínez. Rev. of Kant’s Lectures / Kants Vorlesungen, edited by Bernd Dörflinger, Claudio La Rocca, Robert Louden, and Ubirajara Rancan de Azevedo Marques (2015). [Portuguese] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 155-62. [M] [online]

Heyd, Thomas. “Re-reading Kant on Free and Adherent Beauty.” Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 121-25. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Paul Guyer has proposed that, despite Kant’s apparent avowals that judgements of beauty of things are made without consideration of the purposes that we have for them, purposes do enter into aesthetic judgements of “adherent beauty.” He even attributes to Kant the view that functionality is a necessary condition for the beauty of objects that have certain ends or functions. I consider his claims and propose that, according to Kant, the degree to which an object fulfills its ends may pose a psychological – rather than a logical – factor in its aesthetic appreciation. I agree that judgements of beauty, with regard to many things, certainly are made in relation to the functions that we attribute to those things, but argue that these judgements, as such, are logically independent of whatever judgements are made regarding their functionality, even if in practice their functionality may impinge on our aesthetic judgements.

Hodges, Margaret. “A Hybrid Approach to the Aesthetics of the Natural Environment.” Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 127-31. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I offer a Kantian model for an aesthetic of ecology with ethical implications. I begin with the example of a landscape rehabilitation project, the Bordelais Bog (St. Lazare, Quebec) an 8000-year-old landscape of rare species, in which an architectural framework has been constructed to preserve nature. I examine the work against the use of the natural landscape for residential development, what Emily Brady has termed, the hedonistic model of aesthetic appreciation. In residential development aesthetic appreciation becomes purely instrumental and indistinguishable from pleasures connected to practical use. I expand on Brady’s Kantian model to elaborate the aesthetic of the Bordelais Bog. The architectural structure designed to protect the bog acts as a programmatic whole, protecting the organic wholeness of the site and therein lays its fittingness to purpose. This is analogous to the concept of ‘functional fit’ as articulated by Allen Carlson, involving the way in which the natural environment is composed of, many-layered and interlocking ecosystems. In his theory a particular fit is essential for the survival of organisms and whole systems. It is necessary to formulate the appropriate fit in terms of the functionality of the human ecosystem in balance with natural ecosystems.

Hoffmann, Thomas Soren. “Kants theoretischer Freiheitsbegriff und die Tadition der libertas spontaneitatis.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 47-67. [PW]

Howell, Robet. “Deduction Difficulties.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 111-21. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I argue, contrary to Dennis Schulting in Kant’s Radical Subjectivism, that the main reasoning of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is progressive, not regressive. Schulting is right, however, to emphasize that the deduction takes the object cognized to be constituted in an idealism-entailing way. But his reasoning has gaps and bypasses Kant’s most explicit deduction argument, independent of the Transcendental Aesthetic, for idealism. Finally, Schulting’s claim that Kantian discursivity itself requires idealism overlooks the fact that Kantian general judgements can be true in a domain of objects without being specifically of or about any particular ones of those objects.

Hüning, Dieter. “Kant y la tesis acerca del doux commerce. Sobre la interconexión del espíritu comercial, el derecho y la paz en la filosofía de la historia de Kant.” [Spanish; Kant and the thesis of le doux commerce. On the relation of the spirit of commerce, law, and peace in Kant’s philosophy of history] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 375-85. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article focuses upon Kant’s apology for the commercial society in his “Toward Perpetual Peace.” Such apologies, which can be summarized under the title “le doux commerce,” were widespread in the 18th century. Many philosophers and historians, such as Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, and Ferguson were part of this group. The crucial point for Kant was to combine such an apology with his teleological conception of history, which he developed in his “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View.”

[top] I[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Indregard, Jonas Jervell. “Consciousness as Inner Sensation: Crusius and Kant.” Ergo 5.7 (2018): 173-201. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by an inner sensation. Inter- preting state consciousness as inner sensation reveals an underappreciated influence of Crusius on Kant’s view, solves some long-standing puzzles concerning Kant’s difficult doctrine of self-affection, and sheds light on his theory of inner experience.

Israelsen, Andrew. “Imperatives of Right. The Essential Ambiguity in Kant’s Rechtslehre.” International Philosophical Quarterly 58.3 (2018): 311-29. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The relationship between Kant’s “Doctrine of Right” and his broader moral philosophy is a fraught one, with some readers insisting that the two domains are mutually supporting parts of a cohesive practical philosophy and others arguing for their conceptual and legislative independence. In this paper I investigate the reasons for this disparity and argue that both main interpretive camps are mistaken, for Kant’s Rechtslehre can neither be reconciled to his moral philosophy nor stand on its own. I argue that this failure results from Kant’s confused attempt to define the sphere of right as one that functions independently of (yet analogously to) the moral domain through the construction of non-moral yet categorical imperatives. The result is a fundamental tension in Kant’s text that can only be solved through either collapsing juridical duties into broad moral duties or denying any categorical status to duties of right.

[top] J[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

James, David. “From Kant to Sade: A Fragment of the History of Philosophy in the Dialectic of Enlightenment.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.3 (2018): 557-77. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper, I set out (1) to consider the extent to which Horkheimer and Adorno's account of the transition from Kant's philosophy to key features of the novels of the Marquis de Sade in the Second Excursus of their Dialectic of Enlightenment can be viewed as a fragment of the ‘history of philosophy’ and (2) to explain this account in a way that allows us to ask whether it succeeds in establishing a necessary connection between Kant's philosophy and Sade's novels. In connection with (2), a particular problem emerges. This problem concerns the role played by a non-instrumental form of reason in Horkheimer and Adorno's attempt to establish an essential connection between Kant's theoretical philosophy and Sade's novels, in which the practical implications of the theoretical employment of reason allegedly become explicit. It will be shown that, despite appearances to the contrary, an employment of reason of the relevant type is not identified by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Jankowiac, Tim. Rev. of Kant’s Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction, by Dennis Schulting (2017). [English] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 119-22. [M] [online]

 ——. Rev. of Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self, edited by Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson (2017). Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): pages. [PW]

Jiménez Rodríguez, Alba. Rev. of Fonti e lessico dell’ontologia kantiana. I Corsi di Metafisica (1762-1795), by Lorini Gualtiero (2017). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 592-99. [M] [online]

Johnson, David. Rev. of The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant’s Critique of Judgment and the Project of Aesthetics by Andrew Cooper (2016). Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 76.1 (2018): 131-34. [PI]

[top] K[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Kabeshkin, Anton. Rev. of Kants Theorie der Biologie. Ein Kommentar. Eine Lesart. Eine historische Einordnung, by Ina Goy (2017). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 496-500. [PW]

Kaehler, Klaus Erich. “The Freedom of the Monad and the Subject of Freedo.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 68-76. [PW]

Kahn, Samuel. Rev. of Kant and the Foundations of Morality, by Halla Kim (2015). British Journal of the History of Philosophy 26.2 (2018): 403-5. [PW]

 ——. “A Kantian Responds to Santayana.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 87-89. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In The German Mind: a philosophical diagnosis, Santayana launches an extended attack on Kant and, indeed, German philosophy in general. In this paper, I argue that whatever might be said about his attack on other German philosophers, Santayana’s attack on Kant, despite its subtlety, its force and its intelligence, is fundamentally misguided. To that end, I divide Santayana’s attack on Kant into four parts: an attack on transcendentalism generally and Kant’s theory of knowledge; an attack on the role of inclinations and moral worth in Kant’s ethics; an attack on Kant’s doctrine of the practical postulates; and a general attack on the Categorical Imperative. In what follows, I shall say something about each of these subjects in turn.

Kalar, Brent. “Subjectivity and Sociality in Kant’s Theory of Beauty.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 205-27. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant holds that it is possible to quarrel about judgements of beauty and cultivate taste, but these possibilities have not been adequately accounted for in the dominant interpretations of his aesthetics. They can be better explained if we combine a more subjectivist interpretation of the free harmony of the faculties and aesthetic form with a type of social constructivism. On this ‘subjectivist-constructivist’ reading, quarrelling over and cultivating taste are not attempts to conform to some matter of fact, but rather to reconcile subjective perceptions through mutual interchange governed by the regulative goal of constructing a universal community of agreement.

 ——. Rev. of Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics: Finding the World, by Joseph J. Tinguely (2018). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Mar 2018, #17). [M] [online]

Kannisto, Toni. “Transcendental Paralogisms as Formal Fallacies - Kant’s Refutation of Pure Rational Psychology.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 195-227. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] According to Kant, the arguments of rational psychology are formal fallacies that he calls transcendental paralogisms. It remains heavily debated whether there actually is any formal error in the inferences Kant presents: according to Grier and Allison, they are deductively invalid syllogisms, whereas Bennett, Ameriks, and Van Cleve deny that they are formal fallacies. I advance an interpretation that reconciles these extremes: transcendental paralogisms are sound in general logic but constitute formal fallacies in transcendental logic. By formalising the paralogistic inference, I will pinpoint the error as an illegitimate existential presupposition. Since - unlike transcendental logic - general logic abstracts from all objects, this error can only be detected in transcendental logic.

Kanterian, Edward. Kant, God, and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2018. [xvii, 444 p.] [WC]

Karimi, Mirsaeid Mousavi. “Ibn Sina’s Solution to Kant’s Challenging View of Existence.” Philosophy East & West 68.1 (2018): 112-39. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The article discusses how the "problems of contradiction and significance" can find satisfactory solutions if the views on existence of Immanuel Kant are interpreted on the basis of the same assumptions of his preceding philosophers like René Descartes, Pierre, Gassendi, Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Sīnā. Topics covered include modern approaches to the problems, and the views of Ibn Sina concerning essence, existence and their relations.

Katrechko, Sergey. “Kant’s Appearance as an Objectual Representation.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 44-59. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper analyses the features of Kant’s transcendental philosophy (or Kant’s transcendentalism), which Kant himself described as transcendental idealism. On the one hand, Kant’s transcendentalism rests on the distinction between things in themselves and appearances. On the other hand, our ‘mode of cognition’ [Critique, B25] cognition is representative in that is based on representations — subjective and objective (objectual) ones. A synthesis of the above considerations suggests that Kant’s transcendentalism rests on the conceptual triad “[objective] object (thing in itself; Ding an sich) — appearance (Erscheinung) — and [mental] representation (Vorstellung)“. Kant’s transcendentalism is impossible without the ‘premise’ of appearance (a paraphrase of Jacobi’s maxim). The correct interpretation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy should keep the double difference of appearance both from thing–in–itself and representation. In this transcendental triad, the Kantian appearance has an intermediate status since it is located between objective things and subjective representations. However, the conceptual (ontological and epistemological) status of the appearance needs to be clarified, since Kant himself does not give a clear answer to this question, and at present there are several interpretations, differing primarily in the definition of the concept of the appearance (the contemporary confrontation of the theory of “two objects” and theory of “two aspects” is a paradigmatic example of it). For me, appearance can be correlated with objective–objectual (gegenstänslich) representation. It would be unwise to identify appearance with thing in itself, which was characteristic of pre–Kantian philosophy (naïve realism), or appearance with representation, which was the case in phenomenalist interpretations of transcendental idealism à la Berkley (theory of ‘two objects’). The Kantian appearance, as emphasised in BXXVII of his Critique, is an appearance of an object, which — although implicitly — suggests a semantic relationship of reference. In this case, the appearance is not an object, but just ‘a designation (or sign) of an object’ [Critique, B235]. Appearance (as a sign) is impossible without what appears in it (the referent of a sign). This paper puts forward a number of arguments in favour of the objectual (objective–objectual) status of Kant’s concept of appearance.

 ——. “How is Metaphysics Possible: On the way to Transcendental Metaphysics.” Vol. 23 (Metaphysics): 53-57. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The answer to the question “How is metaphysics possible?” can be obtained with the help of Kant’s transcendental method. Discussing the possibility of metaphysics, Kant distinguishes two modes of it: metaphysica naturalis and metaphysics as a science. Therefore, the possibility of metaphysics is divided into two sub-questions. Postulated by Kant, metaphysica naturalis, which underlies philosophy, associated with active “Kraft” of mind (imagination and understanding) and roots in metaphysics of the language connected with the sense of language (conceptual and categorial) and its formal–structural nature. Thereby the man is homo metaphysicus. Before discussing the possibility of a “scientific” metaphysics it is necessary to consider, first of all, that metaphysics per se consists of metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis, and secondly, the development of it includes three historical modes: antiquity meta-physics (ontology), meta-psychology (epistemology) of modern era, contemporary (post-Kantian) metaphysics. The possibility of metaphysica generalis (or transcendental ontology) is manifested by specific ontological (transcendental) predicates, i.e. categories in the Kantian sense, which exist in our language. The possibility of metaphysica specialis (or transcendental metaphysics) is manifested by impredicative wholeness, or encompassing totalities (comp. with the Encompassing (das Umgreifende of K. Jaspers), which determine the appropriate regional ontology (Husserl).

Kaya, Özlem Duva. “Kant’s Philosophical Anthropology and the Possibility of Living Together with Differences.” Vol. 28 (Philosophical Anthropology): 37-41. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper will examine the place and importance of Kant’s philosophical anthropology and its connection with his cosmopolitan idea. Kant sets his philosophical anthropology as a reaction to a Cartesian conception of “I”. As a work published later, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View can be seen as the core of his critical philosophy and cosmopolitan idea.

Kaye, Lawrence J. Rev. of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical-Historical Commentary, by Henry E. Allison (2015). Philosophical Review 127.1 (2018): 121-25. [PW]

Kim, Heesung. “The Significance of Subjective Materialistic Thought in Kant’s Philosophy.” Vol. 23 (Metaphysics): 65-69. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Subjective materialism is a new worldview of the subject of self-awareness based on man-in-the world, and a methodology of man interconnecting the world. Subjective materialism is a logical result of development in western philosophy. This logic comes from the metaphysics of Graeco, while its thinking originates from Kantian philosophy. Kant’s philosophy has been occupying the most important position in the history of western philosophy. Of important significance in the history of philosophy is a fact implied by the Copernican Revolution in Kant’s philosophy, namely the indication of the possibility for subjective materialism. A particular transcendental epistemology and its point of view about man’s free nature led to today’s subjective materialism. Subjective materialism is a finalization of Kantian philosophy in a materialistic form.

Kinlaw, C. Jeffery. Rev. of The Intolerable God: Kant’s Theological Journey, by Christopher J. Insole (2016). American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92.1 (2018): 183-87. [PW]

Klein, Joel Thiago. “Kant on Human Rights, Peace and Progress: a debate with Luigi Caranti.” Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 89-96. [M] [online]

Kleingeld, Pauline. “The Principle of Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory: Its Rise and Fall.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 61-79. [M]

Klemme, Heiner F. “Der Grund der Verbindlichkeit. Mendelssohn und Kant über Evidenz in der Moralphilosophie (1762/64).” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 286-308. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The paper discusses the concepts of obligation and moral evidence in Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s prize essays. I argue that Mendelssohn departs in significant ways from Christian Wolff’s position, and that Kant intends to overcome Wolffian philosophy with Newtonian methodology while still owing a lot to Wolff and to the project of an ethics within the limits of metaphysics. Although quite akin to Francis Hutcheson’s philosophy, it becomes clear that Kant intended to lay the foundation of an innovative concept of obligation, which shares some similarities with Christian August Crusius’s interpretation of it.

 ——. “The Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity: Garve’s Problem and Kant’s Solution.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 250-64. [PW]

 ——. “Das Problem der transzendentalen Freiheit und seine Losung: Kant versus Wolff.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 77-90. [PW]

 ——. See: Dyck, Corey W., and Heiner F. Klemme.

Kloc-Konkolowicz, Jakub. “Does Spontaneity have to be Naturalized? Freedom as Spontaneity – Today and in Kant.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 205-18. [PW]

Kobe, Zdravko. “Reason Reborn: Pietistic Motifs in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” Problemi International 2.2 (2018): 57-88. [M] [online]

Kodelja, Zdenko. “title.” Vol. 50 (Philosophy of Education): 129-34. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] One of the greatest problems of education is, according to Kant, how to cultivate freedom in spite of restraint. However, it seems that the problem is not only how “to unite submission to the restraint with the capability to use one’s own freedom”, but also the question of whether it is possible to cultivate freedom at all. And the purpose of this paper is to emphasize precisely this particular problem. But the question is why the cultivation of freedom is, or at least seems to be, a problem. It is a problem because Kant himself says that moral culture, whose characteristic is that it refers to freedom, “is not cultivation, but moralization”. Where then, if at all, is the difference between cultivation and moralization?

Kohl, Markus. “Kant’s Standpoint Distinction.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 229-55. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I examine what Kant means when he appeals to different standpoints. I argue that Kant seeks to contrast an empirical, anthropocentric standpoint with a normative, more than human standpoint. Against common interpretations, I argue that the normative standpoint is not confined to practical reason, since theoretical reason is concerned with what ought to be as well. Finally, I defend the coherence of Kant’s distinction against important objections.

 ——. “Kant’s Critique of Instrumental Reason.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99.3 (2018): 489-516. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I argue against the prevalent view that in addition to the categorical imperative of morality, Kant accepts a further law of practical reason, ‘the’ Hypothetical Imperative. Kant rejects the idea that instrumental reason can be a source of a priori, objectively necessary normative requirements. His critique of instrumental reason is a central component of his argument for the supreme rational authority of morality: only moral reason can provide genuine, objective normative‐practical necessities. There are no objective practical necessities in our pursuit of empirical ends and desires. Hence, non‐moral agency is a rationally impoverished form of agency.

 ——. Rev. of The Bounds of Freedom: Kant’s Causal Theory of Action, by Robert Greenberg (2016). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 158-63. [PW]

 ——. Rev. of Kants Begründung von Freiheit und Moral in Grundlegung III, edited by Dieter Schönecker (2015). Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 259-64. [PW]

Kok, Arthur. “Hegel’s Concept of Recognition as the Solution to Kant’s Third Antinomy.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 188-204. [PW]

Krasnoff, Larry, Nuria Sánchez Madrid, and Paula Satne, eds. Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the Twenty-first Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018. [ix, 244 p.] [WC]

[Contents] [Hide Contents]
Macarena Marey (The Originality of Kant’s Social Contract Theory),
Alice Pinheiro Walla (Private Property and the Possibility of Consent: Kant and Social Contract Theory),
Eric Boot (Judging Rights by their Duties: A Kantian Perspective on Human Rights),
Masataka Oki (The Proper Task of Kantian Politics: The Relationship Between Politics and Happiness),
Nuria Sánchez Madrid (Kant on Poverty and Welfare: Social Demands and Juridical Goals in Kant’s Doctrine of Right,
Larry Krasnoff (On the (Supposed) Distinction Between Classical and Welfare Liberalism: Lessons from the Doctrine of Right),
Wendy Brockie (Resistance and Reform in Kant’s Doctrine of Right),
Alyssa R. Bernstein (Civil Disobedience: Towards a New Kantian Conception),
Milla Emilia Vaha (Kantian Insights on the Moral Personality of the State),
Sorin Baiasu (Kant’s Guarantee for Perpetual Peace: A Reinterpretation and Defence),
Paula Satne (Forgiveness and Punishment in Kant’s Moral System),
Jordan Pascoe (A Universal Estate: On Kant and Marriage Equality).

Kraus, Katharina T. “The soul as the 'guiding idea' of psychology: Kant on scientific psychology, systematicity, and the idea of the soul.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 77-88. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] Highlights • This paper argues that Kant's Critical philosophy allows for a conception of empirical psychology as a theoretical improper science in its own right. • Kant's conception of psychology is based on the capacity for inner experience, i.e. empirical cognition of one's mental states guided by the transcendental idea of the soul. • The idea of the soul serves as the guiding idea of psychology in that it delineates its subject matter and pursues the systematic unification of psychological laws. • Psychology qualifies as an intrinsically systematic, though improper and explanatorily incomplete, natural science. • Psychology serves extrinsically the ends of pragmatic anthropology insofar as it saves the phenomena of the mental and contributes to the causal explanation of action.

Kravchenko, Andrey. “The Interpretations of Violence and Lie in the European Philosophical Tradition: Immanuel Kant.” [Russian] Vol. 44 (Philosophy of Action): 95-98. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the modern ethical discourse there are multiple polemics on ethical absolutism, bringing to the forefront two commandments - “you shall not murder” (commonly expanded to non-committing of violence) and “you shall not lie”. To understand the meaning of this polemics it is very important to turn to the European philosophical-ethical tradition (to the ideas of Kant in this case). This paper highlights the idea that two principles, mentioned above, were not equal for Kant. If lie was impossible for him, then violence turned out to be permissible.

Krijnen, Christian. “Introduction.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 1-9. [PW]

 ——. “Kant’s Conception of Cosmological Freedom and its Metaphysical Legacy.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 173-87. [PW]

 ——, ed. Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018. [pages p.] [WC]

[Contents] [Hide Contents] Critical Studies in German Idealism, vol. 23.
Christian Krijnen (Introduction),
Michael N. Forster (Free Will in Antiquity and in Kant),
Gabor Boros (Freedom in Nature, Freedom of the Mind in Spinoza),
Thomas Soren Hoffmann (Kants theoretischer Freiheitsbegriff und die Tadition der libertas spontaneitatis),
Klaus Erich Kaehler (The Freedom of the Monad and the Subject of Freedom),
Heiner F. Klemme (Das Problem der transzendentalen Freiheit und seine Losung: Kant versus Wolff),
Stephan Zimmermann (Kant on ‘Practical Freedom’ and its Transcendental Possibility),
Martin Bunte (Absolute Spontaneity and Self-Determination: The Fact of Reason and the Categories of Freedom),
Marina F. Bykova (Kant’s Problems with Freedom and Fichte’s Response to the Challenge),
Faustino Fabbianelli (Sameness and Otherness in the Free Principle of Philosophy: Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre in comparison to Hegel’s Science of Logic),
Christian Krijnen (Kant’s Conception of Cosmological Freedom and its Metaphysical Legacy),
Arthur Kok (Hegel’s Concept of Recognition as the Solution to Kant’s Third Antinomy),
Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz (Does Spontaneity have to be Naturalized? Freedom as Spontaneity – Today and in Kant).

Kumar, Apaar. “Kant and the Harmony of the Faculties: A Non-Cognitive Interpretation.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 1-26. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant interpreters are divided on the question of whether determinate cognition plays a role in the harmony of the faculties in aesthetic judgement. I provide a ‘non-cognitive’ interpretation that allows Kant’s statements regarding judgements of natural beauty to cohere such that determinate cognition need not be taken to perform any role in such judgements. I argue that, in aesthetic harmony, judgement privileges the free activity of the imagination over the cognizing function of the understanding for the purpose of unifying the object, although the free imagination cannot violate the obscure concepts and principles of ordinary common sense.

[top] L[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Łaciak, Piotr. “Irracj onalność j ako argument przeciwko idealizmowi. Transcendentalizm Kanta i Husserla w świetle rozumienia irracj onalności Hartmanna” [Polish; Transcendentalism of Kant and Husserl in the light of understanding Hartmann's irrationalism] Roczniki Filozoficzne. 66.1 (2018): 33-49. [PW]

Laiho, Hemmo. Rev. of Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason, by J. Colin McQuillan (2016). British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.6 (2018): 1241-43. [PW/PI]

Laitinen, Arto, Erasmus Mayr, and Constantine Sandis. “Kant and Hegel on Purposive Action.” Philosophical Explorations 21.1 (2018): 90-107. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This essay discusses Kant and Hegel's philosophies of action and the place of action within the general structure of their practical philosophy. We begin by briefly noting a few things that both unite and distinguish the two philosophers. In the sections that follow, we consider these and their corollaries in more detail. In so doing, we map their differences against those suggested by more standard readings that treat their accounts of action as less central to their practical philosophy. Section 2 discusses some central Kantian concepts (Freedom, Willkür, Wille, and Moral Law). In Section 3, we take a closer look at the distinction between internal and external action, as found in Kant's philosophy of morality and legality. In Section 4, we turn to Hegel and his distinctions between abstract right (legality), morality, and ethical life, as well as the location of his account of action within his overall theory of morality. We discuss the distinction between Handlung and Tat, and non-imputable consequences. The overall aims of our essay are to shed light on some puzzles in Kant and Hegel's conceptions and to examine where their exact disputes lie without taking a stand on which philosophy is ultimately the most satisfactory.

Land, Thomas. Rev. of Kant’s Deduction and Apperception: Explaining the Categories, by Dennis Schulting (2012). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 145-51. [PW]

Langton, Rae. “‘Real Grounds’ in Matter and Things in Themselves.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 435-48. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Matter’s real essence is a ground for certain features of phenomena. Things in themselves are likewise a ground for certain features of phenomena. How do these claims relate? The former is a causal essentialism about physics, Stang argues; and the features so grounded are phenomenally nomically necessary. The latter involves a distinctive ontology of things in themselves, I argue; but the features so grounded are not noumenally nomically necessary. Stang’s version of Kant’s modal metaphysics is admirable, but does not go far enough. Kant’s causal essentialism involves the essences of fundamental properties, as well as of matter. And things in themselves are grounds, because they are substances, the ‘substrate’ of phenomena.

Laurence, Ben. “Kant on Strict Right.” Philosophers’ Imprint 18.4 (2018): 1-22. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] For Kant right and ethics are two formally distinct departments of a single morality of reason and freedom. Unlike ethics, right involves an authorization to coerce, and this coercion serves as a pathological incentive. I argue that for Kant the distinctive character of right flows from the fact that juridical obligation has a different relational structure than ethical obligation. I argue that this relational structure explains the connection of right to coercion, and also explains how a categorical imperative can be known a priori to issue in both a pathological and non-pathological incentive. Thus the justification of coercion and its special role as incentive are rooted in the relational character of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in categorical imperatives of reason. Since this pathological incentive has a moral basis in the structure of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in a representation of moral laws, I argue that Kant’s discussion of the juridical incentive of coercion is more continuous with his main discussion of moral incentives in the Critique of Practical Reason than it might at first appear. I illustrate the consequences of this reading by discussing the propensity to injustice, as Kant understands it, and the unique way in which the juridical incentive undermines it.

Lazos, Efraín. “Reply to Edgar Valdez.” Critique (blog posted: 27 Jun 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Lee, Byeong D. “The Moral Law as a Fact of Reason and Correctness Conditions for the Moral Law.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 57.1 (2018): 47-66. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the second Critique, Kant claims that the moral law is given as a fact of reason. In this paper, contra the standard view, I argue that there is a non-dogmatic way of defending this claim. And Kant’s principle of morality is widely taken to be a formal principle. How then can such a formal principle be reconciled with our substantial moral end? In this paper, I also argue that Kant’s principle of morality can be construed as a formal principle in the sense that it provides correctness conditions for moral laws, rather than providing specific moral laws.

Lee, Wooram. “Willing the End Means Willing the Means: An Overlooked Reading of Kant.” Ergo 5.16 (2018): 419-44. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant famously claims that it is analytic that whoever wills the end also wills the indispensably necessary means to it that is within his control. The orthodox consensus has it that the analytic proposition expresses a normative principle of practical reason. In this paper, I argue that this consensus is mistaken. On my resolute reading of Kant, he is making a descriptive point about what it is to will an end, and not making a normative claim of any sort. Kant’s argument is that when you know that some object is a necessary means to an end, you do not count as willing the end unless you also will the means, because of the distinctive content of willing: when you will an end, what you will is that you do whatever is necessary to bring about the end. I show how the resolute reading of Kant’s analytic proposition explains the possibility of hypothetical imperatives and defend the resolute reading from the charge that it makes instrumental irrationality impossible.

Leech, Jessica. “The Function of Modal Judgment and the Kantian Gap.” Synthese (posted online: 9 Jun 2018). [PW] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] What is the function of modal judgment? Why do we (need to be able to) make judgments of possibility and necessity? Or are such judgments, in fact, dispensable? This paper introduces and develops an answer to these questions based on Kant’s remarks in section 76 of the Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant appears to argue the following: that a capacity to make modal judgments using (categorial) modal concepts is required for a capacity for objective representation, in light of our split cognitive architecture. This split cognitive architecture leaves room for a mismatch between our concepts and intuitions and, Kant argues, that is why we need modal concepts and modal judgments. In this paper, I develop this account of the function of modal judgment and to explore the extent to which it may improve upon contemporary alternatives. I focus on one particularly important challenge for the account: to explain why a distinction between the actual and the possible, rather than merely a distinction between the actual and the non-actual, is required. In order to answer this question, I supplement the account with a particular way of thinking about objectivity.

 ——.  Rev. of Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (2017). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Oct 2018, #30). [online] [M]

Leirfall, Anita. “Kant on Space and Directions – Some Comments in Light of the Negative Magnitudes.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 107-12. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper I will examine Kant’s conception of absolute space in his Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space from 1768 in order to see how his conception of absolute space is related to the conception of directions and how the different directions themselves are related. Further, I will present a novel interpretation of Kant’s reference to an ‘inner feeling’ of the difference between left and right (directions) in the subject in this work. I will argue that the ‘inner feeling’ is based on a negative magnitude. Such a magnitude is an effort of the mind of which we are conscious through a feeling. A negative magnitude exhibits a cognitive activity that is neither a discursive thought nor a receptivity of the senses. Further, a negative magnitude is an intensive magnitude that comes in degrees. In my analysis of Kant’s ‘inner feeling’ of the difference between left and right, and its relation to absolute space, I will draw on some of his arguments in his less known work Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy from 1763.

Leland, Patrick R. “Unconscious Representations in Kant’s Early Writings.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 257-84. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] There is an emerging consensus among interpreters that in his Critical writings Kant ascribes unconscious representations to the mind. The nature and extent of this ascription over the course of Kant’s philosophical development is however not well understood. I argue that from his earliest published writings Kant consistently ascribes unconscious representations to the mind; that some of these representations are unconscious in the strong sense that they are not available to introspection; and that Kant extends his commitment to unconscious representations by ascribing to the mind unconscious acts of judging and reasoning.

Leserre, Daniel. “La cuestión del lenguaje en Kant: una observación en la Crítica de la razón pura.” [Spanish] Vol. 70 (Renaissance and Modern Philosophy): 81-85. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] A partir de la constatación de que la cuestión del lenguaje en Kant oscila entre un polo, donde se verifica que Kant prácticamente no ha hablado del lenguaje y que en sus obras no se halla una filosofía del lenguaje elaborada y articulada explícitamente, y otro donde se ve su decisiva influencia en la filosofía del lenguaje, el presente trabajo: presenta un caso relevante en la Deducción metafísica de Crítica de la razón pura para un enfoque de dicha cuestión. Con ello el trabajo sugiere, entonces, la posibilidad de una interpretación interna que asume positivamente las indicaciones kantianas explícitas y su valor como punto de partida para la reconstrucción de la posición de Kant respecto del lenguaje. Esta interpretación sostiene que cuando se analiza lo que Kant explícitamente indicó en el marco de su propia terminología y conceptuación se puede, a pesar de que no está desarrollada, identificar una posición respecto del lenguaje fundada en la concepción misma de la filosofía crítica, de posible relevancia para discusión actual en filosofía del lenguaje.

Levine, Steve. Rev. of The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism, edited by Fabio Gironi (2018). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Jun 2018, #16). [M] [online]

Longuenesse, Béatrice. “Kant’s Multiple Concepts of Person.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 155-73. [M]

Look, Brandon C. “Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 94-110. [PW]

Lorini, Gualtiero. “‘Pegasus’ Shoulders’: Tetens’ Phantasie and Dichtkraft. On the Way of Kant’s Anthropology.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 205-33. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the last decades, scholars have aptly pointed out the limits of J.N. Tetens’ contribution to the rise of Kant’s critical theory of knowledge. Less attention has been paid to the possibility of recognizing a further, possibly more consistent, contribution by Tetens to Kant’s thought, namely, to the development of Kant’s anthropology. The present paper aims to test some possible research lines in this direction. After an overview on the observational method shared by Tetens’ gnoseological framework and Kant’s anthropological approach, we will more specifically dwell on some topics that seem to allow a continuity-claim between Tetens’ psychological analysis of the human cognitive faculties and Kant’s anthropological project. The main issues at stake in this investigation are the faculty of empirical productive imagination (Dichtkraft/Dichtungsvermögen), the figure of the genius, and the relationship between language and Denkungsart.

 ——. Rev. of Reading Kant’s Lectures, edited by Robert R. Clewis (2015). Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 178-85. [PW]

 ——. Rev. of Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism, edited by Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzel (2015). Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 356-61. [PW]

Louden, Robert B. Rev. of Kant’s Philosophy of Communication, by G. L. Ercolini (2016). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 155-58. [PW]

Lu-Adler, Huaping. “From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality: What Kant Did with Euler’s Circles.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 35-56. [PW]

 ——. Rev. of Kant’s Theory of Normativity, by Konstantin Pollok (2017). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 513-21. [PW]

Ludwig, Bernd. “Über drei Deduktionen in Kants Moralphilosophie - und über eine vierte, die man dort vergeblich sucht. Zur Rehabilitierung von Grundlegung III.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 47-71. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Since H. J. Paton’s famous commentary from 1947, Kant’s interpreters have considered a ‘deduction of the categorical imperative’ a challenge. This is quite puzzling since Kant himself never talks about such a deduction - and the famous ‘deduction’ he does mention in Groundwork III.4 is, as a close reading shows, not at all the deduction of a law but the deduction of a concept, of the idea of a pure lawgiving will: Only the reality of this idea can explain the possibility of - prima facie impossible - categorical imperatives and thus of morality as autonomy. The presupposition of the validity of the moral law, however, was already a cornerstone of Kant’s critical metaphysics in 1781: Moral theology (which replaces all speculative proofs of immortality and of God’s existence) depends on the moral law’s being an undisputed datum without any need for philosophical justification (‘deduction’). While in the Groundwork (1785) Kant tried to show the practical reality of the idea of a pure will with the help of a speculative deduction of freedom (which a reviewer described as being ‘uncritical’ in May 1786), in the second Critique (1787/88) the reality of that very idea, and with it the idea of freedom, depends (as did immortality and God’s existence in 1781) on the aforementioned practical datum, which, from that point on, Kant called a “Factum der reinen Vernunft” [fact of pure reason].

[top] M[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Magrì, Elisa. “On Alfredo Ferrarin’s Il pensare e l’io. Hegel e la critica di Kant.” Critique (blog posted: 18 Feb 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Marshall, Colin. “Never Mind the Intuitive Intellect: Applying Kant’s Categories to Noumena.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 27-40. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] According to strong metaphysical readings of Kant, Kant accepts noumenal substances and causes. Against such readings, Markus Kohl has recently argued that, for Kant, (a) an intuitive intellect is a decisive measure for reality, but (b) an intuitive intellect would not represent noumena as substances or causes. Against Kohl, I argue that the intuitive intellect might indirectly represent noumenal substances and causes, which is enough to save the strong metaphysical reading. In addition, I show how Kant’s apparently anti-metaphysical statements about the content of the categories can be read in a metaphysically friendly way.

Martinelli, Riccardo. “Metafisica e antropologia nella dottrina kantiana del carattere.” [Italian; Metaphysics and Anthropology in Kant’s doctrine of Character] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 458-72. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper assesses Kant’s ideas on character, as exposed in the Critique of Pure Reason and in Pragmatic Anthropology. The main issue raised by the modern concept of character concerns its disputed mutability: do people inherit an unchangeable character, or can education and circumstances influence it significantly? Kant’s answer is a highly complex one. He deals indeed with the concept from both a metaphysical and an anthropological point of view. Metaphysically, character accounts for the regularity of any causal action, which would otherwise be random and unpredictable. This holds for intelligible causes and for phenomenal ones as well. Anthropologically, character is neither merely inherited, nor effectively influenced by education. Rather, moral character is forged by a sudden revolution. Studying the empirical side of the human character, whose freedom is taken from granted, anthropology addresses the empirical research on human beings to a pragmatic scope.

Martínez, Luciana. Rev. of Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Larry Krasnoff, Nuria Sánchez Madrid, and Paula Satne (2018). Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 546-50. [M] [online]

 ——. See: Herszenbaun, Miguel Alejandro, and Luciana Martínez.

Martínez Fischer, María Guadalupe. “Reflexiones en torno a la cuestión de si es posible encontrar un fundamento moral del derecho en Kant que posibilite una teoría de los derechos humanos en la actualidad.” [Spanish] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 97-102. [M] [online]

Martínez Matías, Paloma. “Kant más allá de Kant: Heidegger y lo no-pensado de la filosofía kantiana.” [Spanish; Kant beyond Kant: Heidegger and the Unthought of Kantian Philosophy] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 128-58. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This essay analyses core aspects of the principal texts dedicated by Martin Heidegger to Kant’s thought, striving to demonstrate how all of them, no matter what their differences, coincide in a purpose common to his singular understanding of the history of philosophy: the bringing to light that which, in the explicitly formulated in his key works, appears in them as what is unthought and unsaid. If this element, unnoticed, determines the elaboration of this works, in the case of Kant the idea takes specific shape in the jointure Heidegger establishes in the first term between transcendental imagination and “originary time”, in his reflection years later on how Kant laid the basis for the modern “mathematical project of the being”, and, ultimately, in the relationship he found in 1961 between the Kantian definition of the being qua position and Greek thought.

Mattana Ereño, Leonardo. Rev. of Kant y el problema de una introducción a la lógica, by Riccardo Pozzo (2016). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 565-72. [M] [online]

Mayr, Erasmus. See: Laitinen, Arto, Erasmus Mayr, and Constantine Sandis.

 ——. “Kantian Benevolence.” Aristotelian Soceity Supplementary Volume 92.1 (2018): 225-45. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kantians may be unable to derive all of benevolence from reverence for rational agency, but the remaining lacuna is not as extensive as Arpaly thinks. For while we should take seriously Kantian worries about separating benevolence from reverence, a considerable part of benevolence can be explained in terms of reverence for rational agency on a plausible intepretation of the latter. Furthermore, Kantians have an irreducible role for benevolence within their ethics, which is different from the role of a self-standing virtue.

McDaniel, Kris. “Nicholas Stang’s Kant’s Modal Metaphysics.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 461-72. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this critical review, I focus on two things. First, I respond to Stang’s interpretation of Descartes, according to which Descartes’ endorsement of his ontological argument commits him to possibilism, the doctrine that there are, or at least could be, non-existent individuals. My response consists in presenting a version of Descartes’ argument the acceptance of which does not require the acceptance of possibilism. The second thing I focus on is Stang’s claim that Kant distinguishes several kinds of real possibility. I raise worries about Stang’s formulations of various doctrines of real possibility, and I preliminarily explore how real essence and ground are connected with the various kinds of real necessity Stang’s Kant recognizes.

McLoud, Willem. “Kant, Noumena, and Quantum Physics.” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3 (posted 15 Jun 2018): 1-94. [M] [online]

McNulty, Michael Bennett. Rev. of Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (2017). Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 338-43. [PW]

McQuillan, J. Colin. “Kant on Scholarship and the Public Use of Reason.” Idealistic Studies 48.1 (2018): pages. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defines the public use of reason as “that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers.” Commentators rarely note Kant’s reference to “scholarship” in this passage and, when they do, they often disagree about its meaning and significance. This paper addresses those disagreements by exploring discussions of scholarship in Kant’s logic lectures as well as in later works like The Conflict of the Faculties. These sources suggest that Kant defends a rigorous conception of scholarship, which may not be consistent with liberal and egalitarian interpretations of the public use of reason. The paper concludes that Kant’s account of the public use of reason provides only a limited defense of freedoms of speech and of the press, which is neither as liberal nor as egalitarian as other commentators have suggested.

 ——.  Rev. of Kant and His German Contemporaries, Volume 1: Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics, edited by Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (2018). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Aug 2018, #34). [online] [M]

Mensch, Jennifer. “Kant and the Skull Collectors: German Anthropology from Blumenbach to Kant.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 192-210. [PW]

Messina, James Anthony. “Looking for laws in all the wrong spaces: Kant on laws, the understanding, and space.” European Journal of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 589-613. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Prolegomena §38 is intended to elucidate the claim that the understanding legislates a priori laws to nature (the ‘Legislation Thesis’). Kant cites various laws of geometry as examples and discusses a derivation of the inverse‐square law from such laws. I address 4 key interpretive questions about this cryptic text that have not yet received satisfying answers: (a) How exactly are Kant's examples of laws supposed to elucidate the Legislation Thesis? (b) What is Kant's view of the epistemic status of the inverse‐square law and, relatedly, of the legitimacy of the geometric derivation of that law? (c) Whose account of laws, the understanding, and space is Kant critiquing in the passage? (d) What positive account of the relationship between laws, the understanding, and space is Kant offering in the passage? My answer to (d) depends crucially on my answers to (a)–(c). As I interpret Kant, he holds that a wide range of a priori laws—including geometric laws, the inverse‐square law, and the universal laws discussed in the Analytic of Principles—are ‘grounded’ (a technical term defined in the paper) in categorial syntheses rather than the intrinsic nature of the space given to us in pure intuition.

Miles, Murray. “Kant’s ‘Five Ways’: Transcendental Idealism in Context.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 57.1 (2018):137-61 [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) explains the puzzling intuitus originarius/intellectus archetypus dichotomy, and (2) casts doubt on the received idea that Kant broke with the traditional theocentric model of cognition.

Mom, Karel. “Another Scandal of Philosophy.” Vol. 22 (Metaphilosophy): 63-67. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant’s work, taken as a whole manifests a diversity of styles of writing, of which the disparity between his critical and popular style is salient. In this paper, this diversity is connected with, what Lyotard calls ‘the absence of a homogeneous language’ in Kant’s system. Taking this connection as a point of departure it is argued that the stylistic diversity in Kant reflects the burden of coordinating the realist and idealist aspects of his philosophical outlook. That Kant labels the skepticism about the deductibility of practical validity from theoretical rightness as a scandal of philosophy is taken as an indication that he is concerned about this problem. In view of this it is asked, with reference to the occurrence of moral and juridical terms (δίκη [justice], τίσις [reparation], αδικία [injustice], διδόναι δίκην [do justice]) in the text in which Anaximander’s key metaphysical ideas about nature and world order are cast what lessons can be learned from the origins of the European philosophical tradition to come to terms with Kant’s problem, which is considered as a problem for metaphysics in general, given its cosmopolitical tendency.

Moore, Thomas. “Kant’s Deduction of the Sublime.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 349-72. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the third Critique, Kant collapses his deduction of the universal validity of judgements of sublimity into his exposition of such judgements, a decision called into question by commentators. I defend Kant on this score, explaining how the exposition of judgements of sublimity serves as their deduction. Kant’s key move is his claim that natural objects are not, strictly speaking, sublime. I argue that ideas of reason, on Kant’s view, are the only truly sublime objects and show how this allows him to establish that the imaginations of all observers operate in the same way in experiences of sublimity.

Morgan, Diane. Kant for Architects. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2018. [xvi, 145 p.] [WC]

Morris, Brian. “Kant & the Human Subject.” Philosophy Now 123 (2018): 26-30. [PW]

Mosayebi, Reza, ed. Kant und Menschenrechte. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. [vi, 320 p.] [PW]

[Note] [Hide Note] Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte, vol. 201.

Mueller, Laura J. “Pure Reason’s Autonomy. Sensus Communis in Reason’s Self-Critique.” Epoché 22.2 (2018): 389-409. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article investigates the relation between freedom, the public use of reason, and sensus communis, as discussed throughout Kant’s political writings and critical works. Kant’s discussion of the public use of reason, as put forth in "What Is Enlightenment?" is closely tied to his views on autonomy, most notably in the political sphere. However, Kant’s distinction between the public and private uses of reason relies upon sensus communis as discussed in the Critique of Judgment. The communicability achieved by sensus communis has a relevance not restricted only to Kant’s explicitly political writings; sensus communis, as discussed throughout Kant’s political writings and critical wo is also what we might call “transcendentally significant.” In this article, I argue that the public use of reason—is vital for reason itself to follow its own normative demands. I conclude that sensus communis itself grounds reason’s use for its own critique.

[top] N[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Newton, Alexandra. “Comments on Dennis Schulting: Kant’s Radical Subjectivism.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 123-30. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper I discuss four ways in which Schulting’s phenomenalist interpretation of Kant faces the challenge of accounting for the possibility of objective cognition. First, I ask whether objective cognition requires the understanding to be a faculty of absolute, not merely relative spontaneity. Second, is objectivity compatible with thinking of the transcendental ‘I’ as an indexical? Third, does objectivity require that the objects have being independently of the understanding? Finally, is it a threat to objectivity if objects can be given to me in sensibility without standing under the categories?

 ——. Rev. of Kantian Nonconceptualism, edited by Dennis Schulting (2016). Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 329-32. [PW]

 ——. Rev. of The Normativity of Nature: Essays on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, by Hannah Ginsborg (2015). The Review of Metaphysics 71.3 (2018): 576-77. [PW]

Nita, Adrian. “Réalité et actualité chez Kant.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 217-21. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] L’une de très importants idées sur l’idéalisme transcendantale kantien vise les notions qui sont impliquées dans cette démarche philosophique: l’espace, le temps et la réalité. On a ici le motive pour lequel nous nous proposons de presenter les relations entre l’existence et la réalité, d’une partie, et l’actualité (Wirklichkeit) et la réalité, d’autre partie, dans le conditions que la plupart des traductions de Kant usent dans un mode indistincte les termes “réalité ” et “actualité”.

[top] O[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Oberst, Michael. “Kant, Epistemic Phenomenalism, and the Refutation of Idealism.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100.2 (2018): 172-201. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper takes issue with the widespread view that Kant rejects epistemic phenomenalism. According to epistemic phenomenalism, only cognition of states of one’s own mind can be certain, while cognition of outer objects is necessarily uncertain. I argue that Kant does not reject this view, but accepts a modified version of it. For, in contrast to traditional skeptics, he distinguishes between two kinds of outer objects and holds that we have direct access to outer appearances in our mind; but he still considers objects outside our mind unknowable. This sheds new light on Kant’s refutation of idealism.

Ochoa, Efraín Lazos. “Unidad del espacio, mereología y geometría desde la Estética Trascendental.” [Spanish; Unity of Space, Mereology and Geometry from the Transcendental Aesthetics] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 46-68. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper proposes an interpretive thesis concerning the unity of space in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The idea is that space has a unity of its own, which is the ground of spatial concepts, both empirical and geometrical; this unity is intrinsic and antiatomic. The proposal is defended against the synthesis reading, according to which the unity of space is the product of the combinatorial activity of the understanding. In the final section, some consequences of the proposal are derived for Kant’s theory of geometry, according to which human sensibility is the source of geometrical knowledge.

Olk, Carsten. “Ich, Selbstbewusstsein und der psychologische Paralogismus. Zur möglichen Bestimmung reflexiver Subjektivität und zur unmöglichen Bestimmung einer Ich-Substanz bei Kant.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 228-48. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article addresses the fact of possible and impossible determination of the I or the self-reflective I. In this context, two questions in particular are discussed: What epistemic functions of the I can be legitimately identified, and what kinds of determination of the I are invalid? A theoretical proof of the immortality of a single, persistent substance of the soul (anima) is not possible, because no material substance that corresponds to the I can be found or determined. As this article shows, however, at least a specific form of knowledge of the I, with a view to Kant’s unity of apperception and its actions, can be observed and is therefore epistemically justified.

Olson, Michael J. “On the Significance of the Copernican Revolution: Transcendental Philosophy and the Object of Metaphysics.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 89-127. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper argues that the famous passage that compares Kant’s efforts to reform metaphysics with his transcendental idealism to the earlier Copernican revolution in astronomy has a more systematic significance than many recognize. By examining the totality of Kant’s references to Copernicus, one can see that Kant’s analogy points to more than just a similar reversal of perspective. By situating Kant’s comments about Copernicus in relation to his understanding of the logic implicit in the great revolutions in mathematics and natural science, this paper argues that Kant’s appeal to the Copernican revolution in astronomy as a forebear to his own transcendental project indicates that his attempt to revolutionize metaphysics by setting it on the secure path of the sciences demands a shift in how we think of the proper object of metaphysics.

Osborne, Gregg. “A Crucial Passage in Kant’s First Analogy.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 131-35. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper is concerned with a passage that has long intrigued interpreters of Kant’s First Analogy. the passage in question can be found at A188/B231 of the Critique of Pure Reason. In order to perceive that some item x comes to exist or ceases to exist, asserts Kant in this passage, you must connect the coming to exist or ceasing to exist of x to things that already exist before it takes place and continue to exist until it is completed. But if you do so, he further asserts, it must be the case that x is only a determination of such things and that the coming to exist or ceasing to exist of x is a mere change in the determinations of such things. These assertions are cryptic and give rise to several questions. In what way must you perform the act described? Why must you do so in order to perceive that x comes to exist or ceases to exist? And how does this entail that x is in fact only a determination of such things and thus that its coming to exist or ceasing to exist is not in fact ex nihilo or in nihilo? The answers given in this paper serve both to clarify Kant’s argument and to identify the main issues that would have to be faced in its assessment.

Ottaviani, Osvaldo. “Noumenorum non datur scientia. Kant e la nozione di mondo intelligibile: tra monadologia e platonismo.” [Italian; Noumenorum non datur scientia. Kant and the Notion of Intelligible World: Between Monadology and Platonism] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 427-57. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper, I analyse those passages where Kant regards Leibniz’s monadology as a “Platonic concept” of the world, i.e. as a description of the intelligible world, which is to be completely detached from any explanation of the world of phenomena. My main aim is to show that such an interpretation of Leibniz’s thought is not opposed to the other one Kant has defended in the first Critique, where monadology was introduced as an “intellectual system of the world”. In order to do so, I will answer two questions. The first is about the reasons why Kant, in a couple of texts, presented Leibniz as a sort of forerunner of the theory of the transcendentally subjective nature of space. The second concerns the reason why Kant is so eager to stress the similarity between monadology and Plato’s theory of ideas. My point is that, in both cases, Kant wants to criticize any attempt to allow a transition (from the theoretical point of view) from the sensible to the intelligible world. Finally, I will show that, behind this deflationary account of monadology, there is also an (implicit) self-criticism of the theses Kant himself defended in the 1770 Dissertation.

[top] P[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Palatnik, Nataliya. “Kantian Agents and their Significant Others.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 285-306. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Critics of Kant’s moral philosophy often object that his emphasis on individual autonomy makes him unable to account for our ‘second-personal’ or ‘bipolar’ duties. These are duties we owe to other people rather than duties we have with respect to them – as we might have duties with respect to the environment or works of art. With a recent and novel formulation of this objection as my foil, I argue that the apparent force of the ‘bipolarity’ objections rests on a failure to appreciate Kant’s inherently practical approach to ethics. On the positive side, reflection on criticisms of Kant’s treatment of ‘bipolar’ normativity helps to shed new light on his conception of practical agency and its place in his system of morals.

Papish, Laura. Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. [#, # p.] [WC]

 ——. “Kant’s Revised Account of the Non-Moral Imperatives of Practical Reason.” Ergo 5.11 (2018): 289-317. [M] [online]

Patrone, Tatiana. “Is Paid Surrogacy a Form of Reproductive Prostitution? A Kantian Perspective.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 27.1 (2018): 109-22. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article reexamines the “prostitution objection” to paid surrogacy, and argues that rebuttals to this objection fail to focus on surrogates as embodied persons. This failure is based on the false distinction between “selling one’s reproductive services” and “selling one’s body.” To ground the analysis of humans as embodied persons, this article uses Kant’s late ethical theory, which develops the conceptual framework for understanding human beings as embodied selves. Literature on surrogacy commonly emphasizes that all Kantian duties heed to the categorical prohibition to treat persons as mere means. What this literature leaves out is that this imperative commands us more specifically to engage ourselves and others as embodied persons. This article aims to relate this point to a specific issue in assisted reproduction. It argues that a Kantian account of human beings as embodied persons prohibits paid surrogacy on exactly the same grounds as it prohibits prostitution.

Pellizzaro, Nilmar. See: Silva, Luciano Vorpagel da, and Nilmar Pellizzaro.

Pereira, Roberto. “The Refutation of Mendelssohnian Idealism.” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3 (posted 15 Jun 2018): 1-35. [M] [online]

Peters, Julia. “Kant’s Gesinnung.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.3 (2018): 497-518. [M]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The notion of the Gesinnung plays a crucial role in Kant's late moral philosophy. An individual's Gesinnung constitutes the most fundamental level of her moral character, for Kant. Moreover, the ultimate moral quality of her actions is determined in his view by whether they are done from a good or evil Gesinnung. Kant's notion of the Gesinnung, however, raises a host of questions. Most importantly, it is unclear what kind of thing the Gesinnung is. While it is tempting to interpret it as a disposition which causally determines the choices an agent makes—along the lines of an Aristotelian hexis prohairetike or a folk-psychological character trait—such an interpretation turns out to be incompatible with Kant's conception of the freedom of the power of choice (Willkür). This paper discusses these problems in light of Kant's account of the Gesinnung in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. I argue that we should understand Kant's notion of the Gesinnung as pointing towards a holistic conception of moral character that radically diverges from the Aristotelian and folk-psychological one.

Pinheiro Walla, Alice. “Kant on Cosmopolitan Education for Peace.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 332-47. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant sees the gradual implementation of a cosmopolitan world order as necessary for securing peace at national and international level. However, he seems to be overoptimistic about the role of states and other political institutions in securing coordination and peace. In some passages Kant claims that a just juridical framework alone, as long as it is efficiently enforced, is enough to secure a large scale coordination of individual’s agency and a maximal protection of individual freedom.
As I will show, other passages suggest that ethical motivation also has an important role to play in the achievement of peace and the implementation of a cosmopolitan world order. This is because good laws alone may produce “good citizens” (who do not infringe the law), but still does not make possible effective political participation and the necessary attitude required for the implementation and improvement of political institutions at national and international level. I will discuss Kant's claim that education must have a cosmopolitan character as well as the duty of states to create responsible citizens, not only at domestic but also at international level.

Pippin, Robert. “The Dynamism of Reason in Kant and Hegel.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 192-210. [M]

Polias, Konstantinos. “Kant’s ‘Introduction of the Critique of Practical Judgment’.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 143-49. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The paper opposes one of the founding common places of the historiography of Pragmatics during the last 40 decades according to which Kant’s Critique “of pure Judgment” signifies the break of modern Rationalism with the tradition of practical judgment that gets restored with Hegel. Against that the paper shows that Kant’s reference to the “Einleitung der Critik der pract.[ischen] Urth.[eils]Kr.[aft]” in the letter to his editor of 2nd October 1792 that accompanies his corrections of the manuscript of the Introduction for the 2nd edition of the Critique of Judgment [CoJ] is more than justified and that Hegel’s infamous idea that self-consciousness is “desire in general” (Phenomenology of Spirit, ¶167) can be almost fully traced in the Introduction to the CoJ not only textually, but also historically and systematically. The paper closes by pointing out a systematical consequence of its mainly historical argument for contemporary neo-Hegelian pragmatic theories of concept formation and conceptual change (Robert Pippin) and related so called “transformative” theories of rationality (Matthew Boyle).

Pollok, Anne. “Beautiful Perception and its Object. Mendelssohn’s theory of mixed sentiments reconsidered.” Kant-Studien 109.2 (2018): 270-85. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Complex aesthetic perception, according to Mendelssohn’s writings between 1755 and 1771, is most alluring if it showcases a breach in the order of perfection. With this, Mendelssohn introduces a shift in our understanding of the artistic act of imitation: Artistic semblance is always lacking, and a painting that does not point to this fact is, in fact, displeasing. This is also the main reason why we enjoy non-beautiful art: in the artistic rendering of an unpleasant ‘object’ we focus on the artistic act itself, on its formal features, and its effects on us as the perceiver. Thus, a representation that evokes the mixed feelings of pleasure, appreciation, and rejection is superior to ‘pure’ beauty, in that it better refers us to higher forms of perfection: the perfection of the perceiving and creative subject (hence, including both artist and audience). It is the nagging, near-painful impression of mixed sentiments that, according to Mendelssohn, guides our self-perfection, the highest aim of all human endeavors.

Pozzo, Riccardo. Rev. of Kantian Conceptual Geography, by Nathaniel Jason Goldberg (2015). Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 185-88. [PW]

Prunea-Bretonnet, Tinca. Rev. of Kant and Rational Psychology, by Corey Dyck (2014). Philosophical Review 127.2 (2018): 232-36. [PW]

Puls, Heiko. “Das unmittelbare Bewusstsein des Sittengesetzes: Achtung und moralisches Interesse in GMS III.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 159-83. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] According to a common interpretation, in the Critique of Practical Reason Kant abandons the approach he had taken in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: in the Groundwork, he was concerned with a deduction of freedom and the moral law, whereas in the second Critique he drops this idea by introducing his theory of the fact of reason. Consequently, this interpretation assumes that the feeling of respect – which plays a central role in Kant’s doctrine of the fact of reason – does not play a major role in the Groundwork.
This paper investigates the function of respect in the Groundwork and concludes that it has the same moral-epistemic function there as it does in the second Critique. In the context of the circularity problem in the Groundwork, Kant discusses the notion of moral interest extensively. However, this expression simply equates to respect. Hence the latter is decisive in the solution to the circularity problem in GMM III. The significance of respect in the Groundwork must be reassessed.

[top] Q[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

[top] R[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Râmbu, Nicolae. “Kant’s Aesthetic Ideas as Axiological Memory.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 321-31. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] By axiological memory I mean the capacity of a society to establish a set of fundamental values in the memory of its people, so that these values become indelible and unforgettable. The thesis that I will argue in this essay is that aesthetic ideas, which are closely related to Kant’s theory about genius and taste from the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, are values that the genius creates and translates into works of art in order to be set in the collective memory. Aesthetic ideas shape the tastes of others so that the collection of works and especially masterpieces of a particular civilization forms a genuine support for the axiological memory.

Rauscher, Frederick. Rev. of How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law: Justifying Strict Objectivity without Debating Moral Realism, by Kenneth Westphal (2016). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 491-96. [PW]

Reiter, Aviv. “Kant on Fine Art, Genius and the Threat of Private Meaning.” Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 307-23. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Wittgenstein’s private language argument claims that language and meaning generally are public. It also contends with our appreciation of artworks and reveals the deep connection in our minds between originality and the temptation to think of original meaning as private. This problematic connection of ideas is found in Kant’s theory of fine art. For Kant conceives of the capacity of artistic genius for imaginatively envisioning original content as prior to and independent of finding the artistic means of communicating this content to others. This raises the question of whether we can conceive of art as both original and meaningful without succumbing to privacy.

 ——, and Ido Geiger. “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 72-100. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] We defend three principal claims concerning natural beauty, artistic beauty and the relation between them. 1) Aesthetic pleasure in nature is typically and paradigmatically occasioned by the spatial form of natural kinds. 2) Breaking with a long-standing tradition, Kant claims that the presentation of such beautiful natural forms is not the end of the representational visual arts. Most art presents aesthetically the idea of humanity in our person. This is Kant’s Copernican revolution in the philosophy of fine art. 3) Although the representation of nature is not a sufficient condition of beauty in the representational visual arts, it is nonetheless a necessary condition of it.

Remhof, Justin. “A World Without a Past: New Challenges to Kant’s Refuation of Idealism.” Southwest Philosophy Review 34.1 (2018): 171-79. [PW]

Resende Júnior, José. “Kant e o direito das gentes: o problema da personalidade estatal e da estrutura soberana da República Mundial.” [Portuguese; Kant and the right of nations: the problem of state personality and the sovereign structure of the World Republic] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 348-74. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The paper deals with two controversial and interconnected points in Kant's theory of right of nations: the nature of states personality; and the sovereign arrangement of the World Republic. In the first point we tried to show that the difficulties of kantian interpreters in determining the type and the foundation of states personality arise from the differences in the way Kant implicitly considers the function of the moral law, which allows us to show that war rights are not a kind of natural right of states, but are based on the dignity of individuals. The elucidation of this first point also contributes to the understanding, in the second point, of the reasons for Kant's difficulties in finding a consistent arrangement for the sovereignty of states in the constitution of a World Republic. These difficulties force Kant to expose the characteristics of the World Republic not directely, but indirectly through criticism of the models of the World State and League of States.

Rinne, Pärttyli. Kant on Love. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. [viii, 189 p.] [WC] [review]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte, vol. 196.
What did Immanuel Kant really think about love? In Kant on Love, Pärttyli Rinne provides the first systematic study of ‘love’ in the philosophy of Kant. Rinne argues that love is much more important to Kant than previously realised, and that understanding love is actually essential for Kantian ethical life.The study involves two interpretative main propositions. First, that love in Kant includes an underlying general division of love into love of benevolence and love of delight. Further, the study divides Kant’s concept of love into several aspects of love, such as self-love, sexual love (and love of beauty), love of God, love of neighbor and love in friendship. A chapter of the book is devoted to each of these aspects, beginning with the lowest forms of self-love as crude animality, and moving gradually upwards towards idealised ethical notions of love. One way or another, the major aspects relate to the general division of love.This analytical trajectory yields the second main proposition of the study: Together, the aspects of love reveal an ascent of love in Kant’s thought. Perhaps surprisingly, for Kant, love permeates human existence from the strongest impulses of nature to the highest ideals of morally deserved happiness.

Rocha, Leandro José. “A noção de ‘sentimento de vida’ em Kant.” [Portuguese; The notion of "feeling of life" in Kant] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 511-35. [M] [online]

Roche, Andrew F. “Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and the Unity of Space and Time.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 41-64. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] On one reading of Kant’s account of our original representations of space and time, they are, in part, products of the understanding or imagination. On another, they are brute, sensible givens, entirely independent of the understanding. In this article, while I agree with the latter interpretation, I argue for a version of it that does more justice to the insights of the former than others currently available. I claim that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction turns on the representations of space and time as determinate, enduring particulars, whose unity is both given and a product of synthesis.

Rödl, Sebastian. “Good, Evil, and the Necessity of an Act.” Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 21.1 (2018): 91-102. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant asserts that the formula of the schools “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni” is undoubtedly certain when clearly expressed (KpV 177). Conversely, doubt reflects a failure clearly to express it. Once we comprehend the concepts of the formula, of the good (bonum) and of desire (appetitus), there is no doubting it. In recent times, the formula has fallen into doubt. If Kant is right, then this shows a lack of clarity with respect to the concepts the formula conjoins. I want to suggest that Kant is right: the formula of the schools is undoubtedly certain. I first explain in Kant’s own terms why there is no such thing as doubting the formula. Then I approach it from a different angle, provided by what I take to be the unclarity that affects current thought on the topic.

Rojas Lizama, David. Rev. of Kant y los retos práctico-morales de la actualidad, edited by Daniela Alegría and Paula Órdenes (2017). [Spanish] Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 123-26. [M] [online]

Roth, Klas. Rev. of Excessive Subjectivity — Kant, Hegel, Lacan, and the Foundations of Ethics, by Dominik Finkelde, transl. by Deva Kemmis and Astrid Weigert (2017). The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Jan 2018, #5). [M] [online]

Rueger, Alexander. “Pleasure and Purpose in Kant’s Theory of Taste.” Kant-Studien 109.1 (2018): 101-23. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the Critique of Judgment Kant repeatedly points out that it is only the pleasure of taste that reveals to us the need to introduce a third faculty of the mind with its own a priori principle. In order to elucidate this claim I discuss two general principles about pleasure that Kant presents, the transcendental definition of pleasure from § 10 and the principle from the Introduction that connects pleasure with the achievement of an aim. Precursors of these principles had been employed by Kant and others in empirical psychology. But how can such principles of empirical psychology be transferred to transcendental philosophy? I suggest that Kant accomplishes this by deriving the connection of pleasure with achievement of an aim from the transcendental definition and the assumption that faculties have interests. I finally reconstruct § 11 as a ‘regressive argument’ from the peculiarities of the pleasure of taste to the need to acknowledge a new faculty.

Rumore, Paola. “Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 213-31. [PW]

[top] S[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Salikov, Alexey. See: Zhavoronkov, Alexey, and Alexey Salikov.

Sánchez Madrid, Nuria. “Critical Disonances: On Efraín Lazos’s Disonancias de la Crítica.” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3 (posted 15 Jun 2018): 1-6. [M] [online]

Sandis, Constantine. See: Laitinen, Arto, Erasmus Mayr, and Constantine Sandis.

Santos, Robinson dos, and Elke Elisabeth Schmidt, eds. Realism and Antirealism in Kant’s Moral Philosophy: New Essays. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. [ix, 232 p.] [WC]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Note/Contents: Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte, vol. 199.
Frederick Rauscher (Antirealist Interpretations of Kant: Transcendental and Empirical Levels of Moral Realism and Idealism),
Melissa Zinkin (Kantian Constructivism, Respect, and Moral Depth),
Christoph Horn (Realist Interpretations of Kant: Kant’s Theory of Historical Progress: A Case of Realism or Antirealism?),
Patrick Kain (Dignity and the Paradox of Method),
Lara Ostaric (Practical Cognition, Reflective Judgment, and the Realism of Kant’s Moral Glaube),
Elke Elisabeth Schmidt & Dieter Schönecker (Kant’s Moral Realism Regarding Dignity and Value: Some Comments on the Tugendlehre),
Stefano Bacin (Something in Between: Moral Realism by Other Means: The Hybrid Nature of Kant’s Practical Rationalism),
(Jochen Bojanowski Why Kant is not a Moral Intuitionist),
Oliver Sensen (Kant’s Constitutivism).

Saunders, John. Rev. of Virtues of Freedom: Selected Essays on Kant, by Paul Guyer (2016). Kantian Review 23.2 (2018): 325-28. [PW]

Šauers, Edijs. “Kantian Schematism and the Ethics of the Image (Remarks on J.L. Nancy).” Vol. 1 (Aesthetics and Philosophies of Art): 295-300. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper, I defend the thesis that although recent French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy agrees with Immanuel Kant that schematism is the unity of the sensible manifold according to the concepts of pure understanding, he asserts that the schematism lies at the ground of image as ontological force, deforming this manifold rather than simply reflecting already-existing objects. First I show that Kant’s conception of schematism of pure concepts of understanding presented in the “Critique of pure reason” (CPR) explains how categories could be applied to the reality asserting that the representation of the object must be homogeneous with the concept, therefore refuting Hume’s scepticism. Second, I demonstrate that Nancy’s analysis of Kantian schema­tism is based on postmodernists’ distinction between presentation (Darstellung) and representation (Vorstellung). It allows Nancy to treat the kantian schematism (pure image of all images) as the ‘claw’, the violent act of representation or image that is treated as force. I argue that Nancy, interpreting presentation and representation in ontologically constitutive sense, shows the ethical dimension of Kantian schematism and proposing the ethics of other, although it is a radical interpretation of Kant and far from Kant’s use of schematism.

Schepelmann, Maja. Der senile Kant? Zur Widerlegung einer populären These. Münster: Mentis, 2018. [287 p.] [WC]

Schmidt, Elke Elisabeth, ed. See: Santos, Robinson dos, and Elke Elisabeth Schmidt, eds.

Schulting, Dennis. “Gaps, Chasms and Things in Themselves: A Reply to My Critics.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 131-43. [PW]

 ——. “Why Kantian Nonconceptualists Can’t Have Their Cake and Eat It—Reply to Sacha Golob.” Critique (blog posted: 21 May 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

 ——. “The current status of research on Kant´s Transcendental Deduction.” Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 69-88. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper I provide an overview of the latest research on Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, from the last 20 years or so, including a non-exhaustive bibliography. I also reflect on the question why in that period there has up until now been so little recent book-length work dedicated to the Deduction, on so-called ‘analytical’ approaches to reading Kant and the Deduction in particular, and on the related issue of the relevance of both evaluative and historical/hermeneutical interpretations of the Deduction. In the latter part of the essay, I consider the most important desiderata for systematic-interpretatively guided research into the Deduction.

Sehnem, Claudio. “A imaginação e a construção doutrinária da Estética Transcendental.” [Portuguese; The imagination and the doctrinaire construction of Transcendental Aesthetic] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 129-54. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The purpose of this paper is to expose what one might call "the aesthetics" of determining judgment, namely the judgment in its cognitive task. I propose to develop the idea that the Transcendental Aesthetic only presents itself as a doctrine precisely by the presence of the phenomenon to be known, who goes to work the entire typical cognitive apparatus of the imagination. Indeed, leaving aside here the Analytic of Principles, the triple synthesis is, in this sense, the preview 'construction' of this aesthetic doctrine, especially if we take as a starting point the statements of Kant, according to which space and time are products imagination.

Sérafin, Stéphane. “Transfer by Contract in Kant, Hegel, and Comparative Law.” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 31.1 (2018): 151-76. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant and Hegel offer two very different accounts of contract as a transfer of rights. In this paper, I argue that Kant’s approach largely corresponds to that taken by the German legal system, in which the transfer of property rights arises separately from the original contractual obligation. Hegel’s account of contract is instead most comfortably associated with the approach taken by the French legal system, in which a contract is sufficient on its own to effect a full transfer of property rights. I conclude that only German law and Kantian transfer theory properly conceive of contract as an obligation, while the Hegelian and French approaches risk erasing the obligational content of contract entirely.

Sethi, Janum. Rev. of Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self, edited by Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson (2017). Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.3 (2018): 568-69. [M]

Shaddock, Justin B. “Kant's Conceptualism: a New Reading of the Transcendental Deduction.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99.3 (2018): 464-88. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I defend a novel interpretation of Kant's conceptualism regarding the contents of our perceptual experiences. Conceptualist interpreters agree that Kant's Deduction aims to prove that intuitions require the categories for their spatiality and temporality. But conceptualists disagree as to which features of space and time make intuitions require the categories. Interpreters have cited the singularity, unity, infinity, and homogeneity of space and time. But this is incompatible with Kant's Aesthetic, which aims to prove that these same features qualify space and time as intuitions, not concepts. On my interpretation, the feature is objectivity. Space and time are objective, in that they ground our judgments in geometry and mechanics.

Shcheglova, Marya. “Immanuel Kant’s Criticism of the Proof of the Existence of God.” Vol. 61 (Philosophy of Religion): 145-47. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The problem of the reality of God’s existence was a keynote of the history of Western philosophy. Anyway, the philosopher that could create his own philosophical system always touched upon the concept of God. It goes without saying that every historical period gave its own solution of the problem. The scholastics aimed to justify the provability of the reality of this concept and its deducibility from philosophical categories, while in The Age of Enlightenment, which included the Classical German philosophy, people tried to think of the question “Is there a God?” rationally. Immanuel Kant attempted to analyze the three proofs of God’s existence: ontological, cosmological and physico-theological. These proofs correspond to the specific cognitive abilities of a human (the perception, the understanding and the reason). The subject of our article is the criticism of the proofs of God’s existence.

Shimony, Idan. “Kant’s First Antinomy and Modern Cosmology.” Vol. 60 (Philosophy of Physics): 31-36. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant’s first antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason deals with the question of the size of the world. The temporal portion of the problem, on which I will focus in this paper, concerns the question of whether the world has a beginning in time or whether it exists eternally. Kant is sometimes understood as arguing that since neither one of the conflicting options can be confirmed, one needs to reject the common mistake of both opponents, namely, that we know the world as a thing in itself, and embrace instead Kant’s transcendental idealism. In view of modern cosmology, Kant’s resolution of the first antinomy may appear outdated. Modern cosmological theories, after all, do suggest that the world evolved from a singular point by a big bang or through a cycle of successive expanding and contracting phases. I wish to argue in this paper that Kant’s analysis of the first antinomy does not involve questions of confirmability and that its lessons apply to modern cosmology as well. Kant’s analysis challenges the view that the world as a whole is a proper object for human investigation, but it does not reject the legitimacy of the cosmological project of explaining the current state of the universe and its evolution in terms of earlier events in the history of the world. It merely shows that modern theories are misguided only insofar as they attempt to affirm that the singular point is the absolute beginning of the world or that the cycle of expansion and contraction is ultimately infinite. Thus, Kant does not deny science as a legitimate avenue of research. He rather keeps cosmology from sliding into the dogmatic paths of traditional cosmological speculations, which purported to account for the absolute origin of the world by means of theological and metaphysical considerations.

Siep, Ludwig.  “Begehren, Autonomie und Gerechtigkeit.”  Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 205-32. [PW]

Silva, Fernando M. F. “Kant, filósofo da linguagem?” [Portuguese; Kant, philosopher of language?] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 293-320. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] It is commonly accepted that Kant did not reflect on the question of language, or on its adjacent problems, and that the question was of little relevance for the great philosopher. The present article intends to offer a contribution towards a contrary opinion. The object of our investigation is Kant’s approach to the anthropological topic of the faculty of designation (Bezeichnungsvermögen, Facultas Signatrix). Namely, we propose to approach Kant’s opposition between word and symbol as different applications of the faculty of designation; to reflect on the different dispositions of the faculties of the spirit required by such applications, and their different potentialities of saying the I in the world; and, once we think the difference between the latter to its limit, to present Kant’s suggestion of a possible cooperation between word and symbol, as it takes place in the poetic metaphor.

Silva, Luciano Vorpagel da, and Nilmar Pellizzaro. “Seria Kant um determinista? Considerações acerca da solução da terceira antinomia.” [Portuguese; Was Kant a determinist? Considerations about the third antinomy] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 103-28. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This study is a critical reconstruction of the solution given by Kant to the alleged conflict between natural causality and causality by freedom. Contrary to what the critics think, the natural causality can’t be interpreted in terms of determinism, considering that this form of interpretation would lead to a collapse in the Kantian system. Furthermore, while in regard to transcendental freedom Kant comes just a problematic concept, not contradictory, the practice freedom point of view is thought to be exerting an effective action on the world of phenomena, although such freedom can’t be proved in the Dialectic and figure only as a necessary postulate. We will see that, unlike what Allison thinks, practical freedom can’t be thought as a relative freedom, semi-critical, but requires an absolute character. This character can be thought in line with the natural causality, being this considered either a material or spiritual cause.

Simfa, Elvira. “Being Moral and Loving Oneself: Kant on Self-Love, Self-Conceit and Morality.” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 165-68. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant’s moral theory is often perceived through opposition of reason (morality) and inclinations. I argue that this opposition has to be reconsidered by taking in account the complex character of inclinations and differ between self-love and self-conceit. Self-conceit violates prudential rationality and is not compatible with morality. Self-love, due to its particular structure that presupposes ability to overcome oneself, can be interpreted as enabling and preparing humans to obey moral commands and successfully aim at happiness.

Siyar, Jamsheed. “Against the Instrumental Principle: A Kantian Account.” Vol. 44 (Philosophy of Action): 71-76. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In a much-discussed passage, Kant claims that it is an analytic proposition that whoever wills an end wills the necessary means to that end. The standard reading of this passage holds that Kant was here implicitly appealing to a normative principle; viz. that whoever wills an end ought also to will the means to that end. I argue here that the normative reading is mistaken, and that Kant was in fact asserting that the willing of the necessary means analytically follows from the willing of an end. In particular I argue that propositions articulating an agent’s willing of the means are analytic-practical propositions that can be derived from the agent’s willing of an end. Further, the derivation of these propositions is possible given the self-conception an agent necessarily inhabits insofar as she wills an end.

Skorupski, John. “Comment on Jens Timmermann, ‘Autonomy, Progress and Virtue: Why Kant Has Nothing to Fear from the Overdemandingness Objection’.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 399-405. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Jens Timmermann’s scholarship illuminates the nuances and contexts of Kant’s thought. I have learned a great deal from reading his article. His question is whether Kant’s ethics is overdemanding, in something like the way that ‘classical utilitarianism’ has been thought to be. He is aware that this is not a clear-cut question, however he is inclined to reply that the answer is ‘no’. I too think the question is not clear-cut, but I am inclined to answer ‘yes’.

Sokolova, Tatiana D. “William Whewell’s philosophy of science and Immanuel Kant’s apriorism.” [Russian] Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 55.2 (2018): 180-85. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The article is the introduction to the Russian translation of the preface and Book I of William Whewell’s classic work Novum Organon Renovatum. In his theory for the philosophy of science, Whewell offers a conception, which radically differs from a positivist or an inductivist models of science – the most influential doctrines of his time. Presupposing that the scientific activity is impossible without acceptance of a metaphysical doctrine, Whewell goes against the contemporary tendencies in philosophy. Nevertheless, eclecticism of his views on certain issues does not allow us to classify him as a representative of any particular philosophical “camp”. In the article, the author analyzes the “a priori” component in the system of the philosophy of science by William Whewell and the influence of Immanuel Kant’s conception of a priori on it.

Sommerlatte, Curtis. Rev. of I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again, by Béatrice Longuenesse (2017). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 504-10. [PW]

Stang, Nicholas. “Replies to Critics.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 473-87. [PW]

Stephenson, Andrew. “How to Solve the Knowability Paradox with Transcendental Epistemology.” Synthese (posted online: 9 Jun 2018). [PW] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] A novel solution to the knowability paradox is proposed based on Kant’s transcendental epistemology. The ‘paradox’ refers to a simple argument from the moderate claim that all truths are knowable to the extreme claim that all truths are known. It is significant because anti-realists have wanted to maintain knowability but reject omniscience. The core of the proposed solution is to concede realism about epistemic statements while maintaining anti-realism about non-epistemic statements. Transcendental epistemology supports such a view by providing for a sharp distinction between how we come to understand and apply epistemic versus non-epistemic concepts, the former through our capacity for a special kind of reflective self-knowledge Kant calls ‘transcendental apperception’. The proposal is a version of restriction strategy: it solves the paradox by restricting the anti-realist’s knowability principle. Restriction strategies have been a common response to the paradox but previous versions face serious difficulties: either they result in a knowability principle too weak to do the work anti-realists want it to, or they succumb to modified forms of the paradox, or they are ad hoc. It is argued that restricting knowability to non-epistemic statements by conceding realism about epistemic statements avoids all versions of the paradox, leaves enough for the anti-realist attack on classical logic, and, with the help of transcendental epistemology, is principled in a way that remains compatible with a thoroughly anti-realist outlook.

Stern, Robert. “Kreines on the Problem of Metaphysics in Kant and Hegel.” Hegel Bulletin 39.1 (2018): 106-20. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This article offers a discussion of James Kreines’s book Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. While broadly sympathetic to Kreines’s ‘concept thesis’ as a conceptual realist account of Hegel, the article contrasts two Kantian arguments for transcendental idealism to which Hegel’s position may be seen as a response—the argument from synthetic a priori knowledge and the argument from the dialectic of reason—and explores the implications of Kreines’s commitment to the latter over the former.

Stevenson, Leslie. “A Neo-Kantian Account of Perception.” Philosophy 93.3 (2018): 411-31. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] I suggest a reconstruction of Kant's theory of perception – in particular his notions of intuition, concept, sensible impression, sensation, synthesis and combination – informed by the progress of philosophy and human and animal psychology since his time. I take from Burge the distinction between unconceptualized perception of objects (found in animals, infants, and to some extent in adult humans) and our conceptualized, judgmental perceptual experience. Kant concentrated on the latter, but he can be seen to leave room for the former, especially if we make clearer distinctions than he did between sensible impression and sensation, and between synthesis and combination.

Sticker, Martin. See: Ackeren, Marcel van, and Martin Sticker.

Stratmann, Joe. “Kant, Grounding, and Things in Themselves.” Philosophers’ Imprint 18.7 (2018): 1-21. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] One of the central issues dividing proponents of metaphysical interpretations of transcendental idealism concerns Kant’s views on the distinctness of things in themselves and appearances. Proponents of metaphysical one-object interpretations claim that things in themselves and appearances are related by some kind(s) of one-object grounding relation(s), through which the grounding and grounded relata are different aspects of the same object. Proponents of metaphysical two-object interpretations, by contrast, claim that things in themselves and appearances are related by some kind(s) of two-object grounding relation(s), through which the grounding and grounded relata involve distinct objects. By way of investigating Kant’s overarching account of grounding, I will argue that the most plausible metaphysical interpretation of transcendental idealism is one on which we can know that there are things in themselves grounding appearances, but not which specific kind(s) of one- or two-object grounding relation(s) obtain(s) between them. Our ignorance of things in themselves therefore extends to their distinctness from appearances — pace both metaphysical one-object interpretations and metaphysical two-object interpretations.

 ——. “Kant’s Mathematical Antinomies and the Problem of Circular Conditioning.” The Philosophical Quarterly 68.273 (2018): 679-701. [PW/PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] On the reading of Kant's resolutions of the first two antinomies advanced here, Kant not only denies that the empirical world has a ground floor of empirical objects lacking proper parts in the resolution of the second antinomy, but he also denies that it has a ceiling consisting in a composite whole enclosing all other empirical objects in the resolution of the first antinomy. Indeed, the order of explanation (i.e. real conditioning) in the first antinomy runs from wholes to the proper parts they spatially enclose, whereas the order of explanation runs in the opposite direction in the second antinomy. But this appears to involve viciously circular explanation, and hence to generate (what I call) the problem of circular conditioning. Working out a solution to this problem involves closer investigation of Kant's account of real conditioning relations, and how these relations are connected to the structure of space and time.

Sturm, Thomas. “Lambert and Kant on Truth.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 113-33. [PW]

Sturma, Dieter. “The Practice of Self-Consciousness: Kant on Nature, Freedom, and Morality.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 138-52. [M]

Šumah, Lidija. “Reason Inclined: Zones of Indifference in Schiller and Kant.” Problemi International 2.2 (2018): 119-42. [M] [online]

Suter, Rafael. “Transmitting the Sage's ‘Heart’ (I): Unsealing Moral Autonomy — Intellectual Intuition and Mou Zongsan’s Reconstruction of the Continuity of the Way (Daotong).” Philosophy East & West 68.1 (2018): 223-41. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The article argues that the decision of Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan to place intellectual intuition at the heart of his philosophy helped in preparing the ground for the eventual restoration of the authority of tradition. Topics covered include the peculiarities of Mou's writings, failure of Mou to cure Kantianism by admitting intellectual intuition, and Mou's philosophy as a philosophical rehabilitation of daotong or "continuity of the way" in Confucianism.

Sutherland, Daniel. Rev. of The Poverty of Conceptual Truth: Kant’s Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits of Metaphysics, by R. Lanier Anderson (2015). Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Begehren/Desire, eds. Dina Emundts and Sally Sedgwick. 13 (2018): 265-70. [PW]

[top] T[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Thiel, Udo. “Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 59-75. [PW]

Thorndike, Oliver. Kant’s Transition Project and Late Philosophy: Connecting the Opus Postumum and Metaphysics of Morals. London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. [xviii, 258 p.] [WC]

Timmermann, Jens. “Autonomy, Progress and Virtue: Why Kant has Nothing to Fear from the Overdemandingness Objection.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 379-97. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Is Kant’s ethical theory too demanding? Do its commands ask too much of us, either by calling for self-sacrifice on particular occasions, or by pervading our lives to the extent that there is no room for permissible action? In this article, I argue that Kant’s ethics is very demanding, but not excessively so. The notion of ‘latitude’ (the idea that wide duty admits of ‘exceptions’) does not help. But we need to bear in mind (i) that moral laws are self-imposed and cannot be externally enforced; (ii) that ‘right action’ is not a category of Kantian ethics – there is a more and a less, and lack of perfection does not entail vice; and (iii) that only practice makes perfect, i.e. how much virtue can realistically be expected can vary from agent to agent. The principle that ‘ought’ is limited by ‘can’ is firmly entrenched in Kant’s ethical thought.

Tinguely, Joseph J. Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics: Finding the World. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2018. [233 p.] [WC]

Tizzard, Jessica. “Kant on space, time, and respect for the moral law as analogous formal elements of sensibility.” European Journal of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 630-46. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] To advance a successful reading of Kant's theory of motivation, his interpreter must have a carefully developed position on the relation between our rational and sensible capacities of mind. Unfortunately, many of Kant's commentators hold an untenably dualistic conception, understanding reason and sensibility to be necessarily conflicting aspects of human nature that saddle Kant with a rigoristic and fundamentally divided moral psychology. Against these interpreters, I argue for a reading that maintains a unified conception, claiming that we must think of reason and sensibility as interdependent capacities, which stand to one another as form to matter. Our sensible nature thus does not stand opposed to reason; its fundamental character is determined by reason's activity. I take Kant's account of moral motivation and the feeling of respect to represent the lynchpin of this unified account. Against interpreters who would emphasize either the intellectual or affective nature of respect, I claim that it should be understood as the formal element of moral sensibility, the result of practical reason determining the capacity to feel and fundamentally transforming its character. To make this argument, I draw on Kant's account of sensibility in the Critique of Pure Reason, claiming that space, time, and respect for the moral law are analogous formal elements of sensibility.

Tomassini, Fiorella. Rev. of Kant’s Political Legacy. Human Rights, Peace, Progress, by Luigi Caranti (2017). [Spanish] Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 573-78. [M] [online]

Tremblay, Frédéric. Rev. of Kant in Imperial Russia, by Thomas Nemeth (2017). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 510-13. [PW]

[top] U[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

[top] V[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Valdez, Edgar. “On Efraín Lazos’s Disonancias de la Crítica.” Critique (blog posted: 25 Jun 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

van den Berg, Hein. “Kant and the scope of analogy in the life sciences.” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science. Part A. 72 (2018): 67-76. [PI]

[type] [Hide type] In the present paper I investigate the role that analogy plays in eighteenth-century biology and in Kant's philosophy of biology. I will argue that according to Kant, biology, as it was practiced in the eighteenth century, is fundamentally based on analogical reflection. However, precisely because biology is based on analogical reflection, biology cannot be a proper science. I provide two arguments for this interpretation. First, I argue that although analogical reflection is, according to Kant, necessary to comprehend the nature of organisms, it is also necessarily insufficient to fully comprehend the nature of organisms. The upshot of this argument is that for Kant our understanding of organisms is necessarily limited. Second, I argue that Kant did not take biology to be a proper science because biology was based on analogical arguments. I show that Kant stemmed from a philosophical tradition that did not assign analogical arguments an important justificatory role in natural science. Analogy, according to this conception, does not provide us with apodictically certain cognition. Hence, sciences based on analogical arguments cannot constitute proper sciences. Highlights • Many 18th century biological theories were based on analogies. • Many 18th century philosophers did not assign analogies a justificatory function. • Kant took biology to be based on analogical reflection. • Kant construed scientific explanations as deductive demonstrations. • Kant did not take biology to be a proper science because it is based on analogy.

Vanzo, Alberto. “Leibniz on Innate Ideas and Kant on the Origin of the Categories.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100.1 (2018): 19-45. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In his essay against Eberhard, Kant denies that there are innate concepts. Several scholars take Kant’s statement at face value. They claim that Kant did not endorse concept innatism, that the categories are not innate concepts and that Kant’s views on innateness are significantly different from Leibniz’s. This paper takes issue with those claims. It argues that Kant’s views on the origin of intellectual concepts are remarkably similar to Leibniz’s. Given two widespread notions of innateness, the dispositional notion and the input/output notion, intellectual concepts are innate for Kant no less than for Leibniz.

Van Cleve, James. “Logicism and Formal Necessity: Reflections on Kant’s Modal Metaphysics.” Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 449-59. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Logicism is Stang’s name for the Leibnizian doctrine that all necessary truths are derivable from identities and definitions. Stang shows that the early Kant opposed this doctrine because he thought the proposition God exists was a counterexample to it; I raise some non-theological counterexamples as well. Formal necessity is the necessity that attaches to a proposition when its truth is grounded in our categories and forms of intuition. Stang treats it as one of several sui generis kinds of necessity in Kant, all of them falling short of logical or metaphysical necessity. I raise several questions for Stang’s account, including the following: Can our having the forms we do really explain the necessity of geometry? Is our possession of those forms self-grounding in an objectionable way? How can our forms ground general truths without grounding particular instances of them?

Varden, Helga. “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered. – A Kantian account of sexuality: sexual love, sexual identity, and sexual orientation.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 4.1 (2018): 1-33. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Kant on sex gives most philosophers the following associations: a lifelong celibate philosopher; a natural teleological view of sexuality; a strange incorporation of this natural teleological account within his freedom-based moral theory; and a stark ethical condemnation of most sexual activity. Although this paper provides an interpretation of Kant’s view on sexuality, it neither defends nor offers an apology for everything Kant says about sexuality. Rather, it aims to show that a reconsidered Kant-based account can utilize his many worthwhile insights and that by making Kant’s account of sexuality more consistent with his own basic philosophical commitments, the result is a compelling approach to the complex and complicated phenomena of sexual love, sexual identity, and sexual orientation.

Veneroni, Stefano. “Osservazioni fisico-teoriche attorno al primo scritto di Kant sulle forze vive del 1746 (1749).” Physis. Rivista internazionale di storia della scienza. 53 (2018): 143-73. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The Gedanken is the first synthetic step of Kantian speculation, in which he addresses the well-known dispute on “the living forces” raised by Leibniz in 1686 with regard to Cartesian philosophy on the theme of conservation of momentum (K : Δp = m.v or F = m.v2 ?). In this first work, one can clearly see the common thread that runs through all Kant’s research, which pursued a systematic description of the a priori Universe; this pursuit followed the programmatic direction of “classical” Science, that is to say, in complete conformity with the law of causality and the principle of sufficient reason, according to which: posita ratione, ponitur rationatum.

Vető, Miklós. Von Kant zu Schelling: Die beiden Wege des Deutschen Idealismus. Translated by Hans-Dieter Gondek. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2018. [c.1100 p.] [WC]

[Note] [Hide Note] Translated from the original French: De Kant à Schelling: les deux voies de l'idéalisme allemand, 2 vols. (Grenoble: J. Millon, 1998, 2000) [492, 542 p.].

Vogelmann, Rafael Graebin. “Can we make sense of free harmony?” Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 53-74. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Despite its centrality to Kant's account of judgments of taste, the notion of free harmony is remarkably hard to grasp. The difficulty springs, I argue, from the fact that any interpretation of this notion has to account for two desiderata that conflict under the assumption that concepts restrict imagination's freedom in composing the manifold of intuition: (a) that free harmony is compatible with a determinate cognition of the beautiful object and (b) what concept the object is subsumed under is irrelevant to determine whether or not it elicits free harmony. Guyer has objected to a number of interpretations on the ground that they cannot account for (a). I argue that Guyer's own metacognitive interpretation fails because it cannot account for (b). Based on some claims in the General remark on the first section of the Analytic, I outline an interpretation of free harmony that can make (a) and (b) compatible.

[top] W[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Waibel, Violetta L. “Hölderlin’s Idea of ‘Bildungstrieb’: A Model from Yesteryear?” Educational Philosophy & Theory 50.6-7 (2018): 640-51. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The term Bildungstrieb, which was used toward the end of the eighteenth century by thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant, or Friedrich Schiller, but which is obsolete in today's vernacular, was of great importance for Friedrich Hölderlin. In this article, I explore the historical roots of this concept in the biology of the time, which was then still searching for the right concepts to describe the organic. Bildungstrieb is found in Kant's teleology in the Critique of Judgment, where Kant with the help of this concept works out the specificity of organic life as well as its vicinity and difference to the teleology of human acts and action. Kant himself refers to the Göttingen anatomist, zoologist, and anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in whose writings Kant found the term which he reinterpreted for his own purposes. Friedrich Schiller adopts the word Bildungstrieb in his work Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, reinterpreting it from the point of view of the history of ideas. It is Friedrich Hölderlin, finally, who in his essay “The Perspective from which We Have to Look at Antiquity”, and in related texts, gives the Bildungstrieb an important role. The Bildungstrieb needs to be awakened, if art is going to draw in an original way from an undeformed source. During work on the tragedy The Death of Empedocles, the poet further developed the concept of Bildungstrieb to include the idea of an opposition between what he calls the 'aorgic' and the 'organic', which mutually condition, complete, and penetrate one another, in a manner similar to Nietzsche's even more powerful formulation of the Janus-faced artistic impulse, as embodied in the opposition of the Dionysian and the Apollonian.

Wang, Weijia. “Beauty as the Symbol of Morality: A Twofold Duty in Kant’s Theory of Taste.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (20 March 2018): online. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the third Critique, Kant claims that beauty is the symbol of morality and that the consideration of this relation is a duty. This paper declares Kant’s argument to be twofold: firstly, experience of beauty strengthens our moral feeling. Secondly, in judging the beautiful, we assume some indeterminate purpose underlying nature, based on which we can conceive of nature as cooperative with our practical pursuit. Hence, for the sake of moral cultivation and moral motivation, it is our duty to regard beauty as the special symbol of morality.

 ——. “Three Necessities in Kant’s Theory of Taste: Necessary Universality, Necessary Judgment, and Necessary Free Harmony.” International Philosophical Quarterly 58.3 (2018): 255-73. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper argues that the structural obscurity in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment reflects his tacit employment of three correlated but distinct notions: necessity considered as the universal validity of the judgment of taste; necessity considered as a feature of the judgment itself; and necessity considered as a feature of the mental free harmony that obtains in judging certain forms with taste. These distinctions have not been sufficiently recognized by commentators so far. Clarification of these three notions can shed new light on the structure of the first part of Kant’s third Critique as well as on debates over the plausibility of his claims regarding taste.

 ——. “Kant’s Argument for the Principle of Anticipations of Perception.” Philosophical Forum 49.1 (2018): 61-81. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The article examines the argument of philosopher Immanuel Kant for the Principle of Anticipations of Perception (PAP). Topics include the differences between categorical and empirical notions of continuity, degrees of consciousness, qualitative categories of judgments, and the Principle of Axioms of Intuition.

Ward, Andrew. “Has Kant Answered Hume’s Causal Skepticism?” Vol. 14 (History of Philosophy): 193-98. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Do Hume and Kant hold strongly divergent views about the causal principle, viz. the principle that every event or change of state in nature must have a cause? It has traditionally been held that they do, and on the ground that while Hume claims that there is no justification for the principle’s acceptance, Kant claims that the principle can be shown to be necessary for the possibility of experience. However, I argue that, on Hume’s account of how we come to believe in the existence of external objects, it is not possible for us to perceive any external object that is changing its state randomly or acausally. Accordingly, Hume is no position to deny that the causal principle can be justified, given he acknowledges, like Kant, that we do believe ourselves capable of perceiving events, or changes of state, in nature. Equally, Kant is no position to claim to have answered Hume’s scepticism about the causal principle given he acknowledges, like Hume, that the objects of the senses are, in reality, merely appearances and not things in themselves.

Ward, Ken. “Social networks, the 2016 US presidential election, and Kantian ethics: applying the categorical imperative to Cambridge Analytica’s behavioral microtargeting.” Journal of Media Ethics 33.3 (2018): 133-48. [PI]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The 2016 US presidential election witnessed the development of ethically dubious methods of political persuasion built and executed on social networking sites. The following analyzes the ethics of behavioral microtargeting practices such as those of Cambridge Analytica, a company that claims to have played a central role in Donald Trump’s successful candidacy through its use of social networking sites such as Facebook. After describing Cambridge Analytica’s method of data manipulation and identifying several threats to individual autonomy posed by such practices, this research explores whether Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative could be used by individuals to effectively guard democratic processes.

Watkins, Eric. “Introduction.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 1-7. [M]

 ——. “The Unconditioned Goodness of the Good Will.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 11-28. [M]

 ——, ed. Kant on Persons and Agency. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xii, 242 p.] [M]

[Contents] [Hide Contents]
Eric Watkins (The Unconditioned Goodness of the Good Will),
Allen Wood (Universal Law),
Stephen Engstrom (Understanding Autonomy: Form and Content of Practical Knowledge),
Pauline Kleingeld (The Principle of Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory: Its Rise and Fall),
Lucy Allais (Evil and Practical Reason),
Marcus Willaschek (Freedom As a Postulate),
Paul Guyer (The Struggle for Freedom: Freedom of Will in Kant and Reinhold),
Dieter Sturma (The Practice of Self-Consciousness: Kant on Nature, Freedom, and Morality),
Béatrice Longuenesse (Kant’s Multiple Concepts of Person),
Barbara Herman (We Are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s Ethics),
Robert Pippin (The Dynamism of Reason in Kant and Hegel),
Karl Ameriks (Once Again: The End of All Things).

 ——. “Lambert and Kant on Cognition (Erkenntnis) and Science (Wissenschaft).” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 175-91. [PW]

Watt, Robert. “Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, Non-Conceptualism, and the Fitness-for-Purpose Objection.” Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 65-88. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The subject of this article is a powerful objection to the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. Part of the purpose of the deduction is to refute the sort of scepticism according to which there are no objects of empirical intuition that instantiate the categories. But if the non-conceptualist interpretation is correct, it does not follow from what Kant is arguing in the transcendental deduction that this sort of scepticism is false. This article explains and assesses a number of possible responses to this objection.

 ——. Rev. of Kant’s Inferentialism: The Case Against Hume, by David Landy (2015). British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 215-18. [PW]

Weinrib, Ernest J. “Ownership, Use, and Exclusivity: The Kantian Approach.” Ratio Juris 31.2 (2018): 123-38. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Ownership combines the owner's right to exclude others from the owned object and the owner's liberty to use that object. This article addresses the relationship between using and excluding, by presenting Grotius's and Kant's classic accounts of ownership. Grotius's approach treats use and exclusivity as separate notions, with the latter evolving out of the former. For Kant, in contrast, use and exclusivity are integrated aspects of ownership as a right within a regime of equal reciprocal freedom. This article offers a Kantian critique of Grotius's account of the original right to use, and then presents Kant's notion of usability as the basis for his integration of use and exclusivity.

Werner, Andrew. “Hegel on Kant's Analytic–Synthetic Distinction.” European Journal of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 502-24. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper, I argue, first, that Hegel defended a version of the analytic/synthetic distinction—that, indeed, his version of the distinction deserves to be called Kantian. For both Kant and Hegel, the analytic/synthetic distinction can be explained in terms of the discursive character of cognition: insofar as our cognition is discursive, its most basic form can be articulated in terms of a genus/species tree. The structure of that tree elucidates the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Second, I argue that Hegel has an interesting and so far unexplored argument for the analytic/synthetic distinction: Hegel argues that the systematic relationship between concepts expressed in a genus/species tree can only be expressed through synthetic judgments. Third and finally, I explore some of the implications that the arguments in the first two parts of the essay have for understanding the way in which Hegel differs from Kant. I argue that Hegel accepts Kant's point that discursive cognition cannot be used to cognize the absolute. However, Hegel thinks that we can, nevertheless, cognize the absolute. I explore the character of this non‐discursive cognition and argue that we can understand Hegel's glosses on this form of cognition—as simultaneously analytic and synthetic and as having a circular structure—through contrasting it with his account of discursive cognition. As a consequence, I argue that we must give up on attempts to understand ‘the dialectical method’ and ‘speculative cognition’ on the model of discursive cognition.

Westphal, Kenneth R. Grounds of Pragmatic Realism: Hegel’s internal Critique and Reconstruction of Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018. [xvi, 546 p.] [WC]

[Note] [Hide Note] Critical Studies in German Idealism, volume 20.

Whiston, Amna. Rev. of Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the 21st Century, edited by Larry Krasnoff, Nuria Sánchez Madrid, and Paula Satne (2018). Kantian Review 23.3 (2018): 521-26. [PW]

Wilford, Paul T. Rev. of A Short History of German Philosophy, by Vittorio Hösle (2016). Kantian Review 23.1 (2018): 163-68. [PW]

Willaschek, Marcus. “Freedom As a Postulate.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 102-19. [M]

Williams, Jessica J. “Kant on the original synthesis of understanding and sensibility.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 66-86. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In this paper, I propose a novel interpretation of the role of the understanding in generating the unity of space and time. On the account I propose, we must distinguish between the unity that belongs to determinate spaces and times – which is a result of category-guided synthesis and which is Kant’s primary focus in §26 of the B-Deduction, including the famous B160–1n – and the unity that belongs to space and time themselves as all-encompassing structures. Non-conceptualist readers of Kant have argued that this latter unity cannot be the product of categorial synthesis. While they are correct that this unity is not the product of any particular act of category-guided synthesis, I argue that conceptualists are right to nevertheless attribute this unity to the understanding. I argue that it is a result of what we can think of as the ‘original’ synthesis of understanding and sensibility themselves – it is a synthesis, moreover, in which the whole is logically prior to the parts.

 ——. “New Work on Kant (I): Kantian Nonconceptualism.” Critique (blog posted: 10 Jun 2018) n.p. [PW] [online]

Winegar, Reed. Rev. of Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (2017). Journal of the History of Philosophy 56.2 (2018): 377-78. [PI]

 ——. Rev. of Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, by Stephen R. Palmquist (2016). International Philosophical Quarterly 58.1 (2018): 113-15. [PW]

Wirtz, Markus. “Religiöser Pluralismus als philosophische Herausforderung. Erwägungen im Anschluss an John Hick und Immanuel Kant.” [German] Vol. 61 (Philosophy of Religion): 195-203. 2013 World Congress Proceedings. General editor: Konstantinos Boudouris (op cit.). [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Eine der pointiertesten Thesen zur Problematik der religiösen Diversität hat John Hick mit seinem religionstheologischen Pluralismus formuliert. Für Hick teilen die verschiedenen Religionen sowohl den gemeinsamen Ausgangspunkt bei der menschlichen Erlösungsbedürftigkeit als auch die Bezugnahme auf eine als solche unerkennbare transzendente Realität, die Hick als „The Real“ bezeichnet. Für die Differenzierung zwischen den kulturell divergierenden Religionsformen und der transzendenten Wirklichkeit des Göttlichen hat Hick methodische Anleihen bei der kantischen Unterscheidung zwischen phänomenaler und noumenaler Sphäre gemacht, die sich aus mehreren Gründen als problematisch erweisen. Der religiös lebende Mensch kann sich die Position des religiösen Pluralismus im Sinne Hicks nicht zu eigen machen, ohne den Wahrheitsanspruch seiner Religion auf eine Weise zu relativieren, die ihre Ausübung nahezu verunmöglicht. Aus diesem Grund ist der religiöse Pluralismus Hicks letztlich nicht dazu geeignet, der kognitiven Herausforderung, die in der Koexistenz divergierender religiöser Wahrheitsansprüche besteht, angemessen zu begegnen. Eine religionsphilosophische Theorie religiöser Pluralität sollte sich demgegenüber von der kantischen Dreiteilung des menschlichen Vernunftvermögens in theoretische und praktische Vernunft sowie Urteilskraft inspirieren lassen und religiöse Positionen zu Welt- und Gottesbildern, ethischen Normen und mystisch-ästhetischen Erlebnissen hinsichtlich ihrer möglichen Konvergenz oder Divergenz analysieren.

Wood, Allen. “Universal Law.” Kant on Persons and Agency. Ed. Eric Watkins (op cit.). 29-43. [M]

Wunderlich, Falk. “Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique.” Kant and His German Contemporaries. Eds. Corey Dyck and Falk Wunderlich (op cit.). 155-72. [PW]

 ——. See: Dyck, Corey, and Falk Wunderlich.

 ——, ed. See: Dyck, Corey, and Falk Wunderlich, eds.

[top] X[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

[top] Y[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Yokoyama, Fernando Sposito. “Observações críticas acerca da prova kantiana da objetividade das representações na Dedução Transcendental das Categorias.” [Portuguese; Critical remarks regarding the Kantian proof of the objectivity of representations in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories] Studia Kantiana 16.1 (2018): 25-51. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] According to a long line of interpreters, the Transcendental Deduction presented by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason contains an anti-skeptical argument that aims to prove the objectivity of our mental representations. Although we believe this is a correct reading of the Deduction, the present article intends to question the effectiveness of its antiskeptical argument. According to our analysis, in order to prove the objectivity of our representations Kant must commit himself to the thesis that the agreement of appearances with our faculty of cognition is not merely contingent, but necessary. However, we will argue that this same thesis will force us to assign to the regulative principles of reason and/or to the so-called “principle of purposiveness” a role through which they will undermine the anti-skeptical results supposedly achieved in the Deduction’s argument.

Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant’s Philosophical Revolution: A Short Guide to the Critique of Pure Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. [x, 113 p.] [PW]

[top] Z[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Zaiţev, Eugenia. “The Memory and the Ailing Imagination at Immanuel Kant.” Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 15.1 (2018): 115-24. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the present paper, we substantiate the theory according to which the ailments of imagination presented by Immanuel Kant, especially in his work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, are sources of artistic creation. It is obvious that not anyone suffering from melancholia, nostalgia, hypochondria or any other ailment of the soul, which Immanuel Kant refers to, becomes a creator of culture. Genius is required for this, but instead of diminishing the creative power of the genius, it seems to be enhanced by the ailments of imagination or generally, by the ailments of the soul. The hypertrophic imagination in the case of a genius plays a major role in the process of fixation in the individual and collective memory of what Immanuel Kant names "aesthetic ideas".

Zammito, John H. “Kant and the Medical Faculty: One ‘Conflict of the Faculties’.” Epoché 22.2 (2018): 429-51. [PW]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The conflict between Kant and the medical faculty was far more complex and substantial than is indicated in the section of his famous Conflict of the Faculties addressing this matter. In this essay I will consider not only what Kant, as a philoso­pher, thought of medicine as a faculty, but what medicine as a faculty thought of Kant as a philosopher.

Zhavoronkov, Alexey, and Alexey Salikov. “The Concept of Race in Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology.” Con-Textos Kantianos 7 (2018): 275-92. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In the course of the last 20 years, the problem of Kant’s view of races has evolved from a marginal topic to a question which affects his critical philosophy in general, including the anthropology and its influence on contemporary social studies. The goal of our paper is to examine the anthropological role of Kant’s concept of race from the largely overlooked or underestimated perspective of his Lectures on Anthropology. Taking into account the differences between Kant’s approach in the early lectures of the 1770s and early 1780s and the lectures of the late 1780s in the light of the development of the idea of race in Kant’s works, we will demonstrate that several key elements of Kant’s 1780s theory of race presented in his published works can be found in his early lectures. On the other hand, we will prove that Kant gradually abandons racial hierarchies and moral characteristics of races in his anthropological lectures of the late 1780s and in the Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View, shifting his focus to more nuanced descriptions of morals of different nations.

Zimmermann, Stephan. “Kant on ‘Practical Freedom’ and its Transcendental Possibilit.” Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective. Ed. Chistian Krijnen (op cit.). 91-122. [PW]

Zöller, Günter. “Law and Liberty. Immanuel Kant and James Madison on the Modern Polity.” Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.1 (2018): 1-13. [M] [online]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The paper relates Kant to the American Revolution by connecting his republicanism with the ingenious balancing of national and federal features in the constitution of the American Republic, as envisioned and enacted by James Madison. Section 1 sets the stage by profiling Kant and Madison in historical and systematic terms. Section 2 traces the development of republicanism from its ancient origins to its modern variety. Section 3 reconstructs Kant’s legalist republicanism in the twofold context of his philosophy of history and his philosophy of law. Section 4 portrays Madison as the leading theoretician of the modern federal republic.

[top] Dissertations[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  —  Dissertations ]

Aylsworth, Tim. Cracks in the Keystone: Kant on the Incomprehensibility of Freedom. Ph.D. diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018. [iii, 194 p.] Advisor: James Messina. [PQ]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] In my dissertation I put forward a novel explanation and defense of Kant’s claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I explain the different kinds of freedom at work in Kant’s writings, and I underscore the centrality of his notoriously problematic concept of transcendental freedom. I examine Kant’s theoretical and practical arguments concerning this kind of freedom, and I explain what it is that we cannot comprehend about it.

Hovhannisyan, Garri. The Purposive Mind: Philosophical Foundations for a Theory of Teleology in the Sciences of Mind and Life. Master’s thesis. University of West Georgia (Psychology), 2018. [126 p.] Advisor: Lisa Osbeck. [PQ]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] The problem of intrinsic teleology is that of generating a scientific explanation of purposive (goal-directed) behavior in nature. It is far from clear, however, how purposive behavior could possibly arise in a purely causal universe. The popular approach within the biological and cognitive sciences is reductive in that it explains purposiveness in non-purposive terms. This thesis finds the reductive approach unsatisfying and offers a philosophical argument for a non-reductive alternative, delivered across six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the problem of teleology and argues that the way in which the problem ought to be addressed is philosophically. Chapter 2 offers additional insight into the nature of the problem by situating it in a discussion of its historical context: it traces the beginnings of the reduction of teleology to the writings of René Descartes and locates the problem of teleology in its modern framing in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Chapter 3 explicates and critiques neo-Darwinism and cognitivism—two modern inheritors of Kantian philosophy—which act to jointly ground the reductive approach to teleology. Upon clearing the way for a non-reductive alternative, chapter 4 introduces the “enactive approach” to cognitive science and argues that it is able to leverage a non-reductive position with respect to teleology. Accordingly, chapter 5 constitutes the theory-building element of this thesis and shows how exactly enactivism can act to leverage such a non-reductive position. Finally, chapter 6 summarizes the findings of this thesis and discusses some general applications for future research in cognitive science and psychopathology.

Mezini, Erjus. The Kantian Principle of Treating Humanity as an End. Master’s thesis. State University of New York at Albany, 2018. [69 p.] Advisor: Jon Mandle. [PQ]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] This paper emphasizes the central role of the Formula of Humanity in Kantian ethics. It focuses mostly on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, with hypotheses being tested on Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals as well. It starts with an analysis of the argument Kant offers for the Formula of Humanity in Groundwork II , explicating the meaning of this formula and its distinction from the Formula of the Universal Law. It further develops on comparing all the formulations of the categorical imperative, and it argues that not all formulations are equivalent. It concludes that the categorical imperative is exhausted by the Formula of Humanity, insofar as the latter generates all Kantian duties.

Wellmann, G. The idea of a metaphysical system in Lambert, Kant, Reinhold, and Fichte. [English] Ph.D. diss. Leuven, 2015. [pages p.] Advisor: Karin de Boer. [WC]

[Abstract] [Hide Abstract] Description: The project reconsiders the reception and transformation of Kant's conception of a philosophical system by Reinhold and Fichte. It challenges interpretations that view Kant's references to his projected system through the lenses of latter philosophers.

---

Citation Source Key

[ASP] — Academic Search Premier

[JSTOR]

[M] — material copy of the book or journal

[MUSE] — Project Muse

[PI] — Philosopher’s Index

[PQ] — ProQuest

[PW] — publisher’s website

[RC] — Rodica Croitoru

[WC] — WorldCat