Hegel's integration of the concept of Life in the Logic has long been disputed and rejected by many scholars. The most common objection was that it seemed counterintuitive to integrate an empirical ...phenomenon such as Life into a Logic that, in fact, ought to present an immanent development of pure concepts. Hegel was often accused of bringing empirical considerations into his Logic in order to develop his logical account of Life. Consequently, there has been a great discussion about the question as to whether a Logic is an appropriate place for this concept—a discussion that did not occur with respect to other categories in Hegel's Logic. Now, in contemporary literature on Hegel, there is a surge of genuine interest in Hegel's logical account of Life, accompanied by the insight that the concept of Life plays an important and indispensable role in Hegel's philosophy. However, what this role is precisely is a controversial issue.
This article proposes that Jonas’s understanding of gnosticism differs substantially from the account typically associated with him. That standard account takes the basic tenets of existentialism as ...the foundation to its discussion of alienated individuality, whereas Jonas’s system uses neo-Kantian epistemology to construct both alienation and individuality out of a unified field of human interaction. Within his framework, gnosticism is a single historical-philosophical episode of inauthenticity, highly influential yet isolated in time, unlike the ubiquitous understanding of it. This article reviews Jonas’s system, elements of its early and later acceptance, along with selected issues raised by critics, from Heidegger and Scholem to Colpe, Yamauchi, Williams, and King.
In this paper I argue that individuals are, prior to the existence of just institutions requiring that they do so, bound as a matter of global distributive justice to restrict their use, or share the ...benefits fairly of any use beyond their entitlements, of the Earth's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases (EAC) to within a specified justifiable range. As part of the search for an adequate account of climate morality, I approach the task by revisiting, and drawing inspiration from, two prominent models from classical political philosophy for thinking about norms (rights, permissions, limits, etc.) regarding “pre‐institutional” appropriation of unowned resources; Locke and Kant, respectively. The basic resources they develop—connected to fundamental norms of equality and rights to self‐preservation and freedom—in order to generate their particular schema for distributive shares prior to the existence of just institutions can be usefully and plausibly connected up with the scarce, valuable, rival, non‐excludable, global, and unowned resource that is EAC in order to undergird a picture of individual climate duties in the contemporary world. It is a picture that comes with some fairly radical implications, especially for the well‐off.
In this ninth chapter of Interpreting Kant in Education, I respond to familiar criticisms in education theory of a dualism that is seen to be at the heart of Kant's philosophy. This, and related ...charges of a detached conception of mind, are addressed through a discussion of concepts—conceptual unity, conceptual distinctions, how these are learnt and developed, and the idea of a dynamic system of concepts. Sebastian Rödl's work on the general and particular is used to re‐emphasise the unity of the capacities in perception and experience, and to help show how thought and reality can be understood together. Alternative interpretations of Kant's terms, introduced through the chapters, are expanded on, to bring out more of the fine‐tuned richness of Kant's view that is obscured in characterisations that make up the familiar ‘Kantian’ picture in education. The aim is to further delineate the Kant who is not a ‘Kantian’.
‘The human being’, Kant contends, ‘is the only creature that must be educated’. Thus, for Kant, the concept of education plays a central role in the answer to one of the fundamental questions of ...philosophy: What is the human being? Education is the means by which the rational powers definitive of our humanity are actualised and cultivated. It is thus the process in which individuals ‘become human’ and, at the same time, the process in which humanity strives to improve—indeed perfect—itself so that it should become possible for us to live in conformity with the requirements of morality in a cosmopolitan realisation of the kingdom of ends. This paper examines the extent to which the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into educational practices forces us to rethink Kant's position. It is argued that the answer depends on whether systems embodying AI are viewed merely as tools to enhance educational practices or as fully fledged thinking subjects, capable of independent thought and agency. While the former view leaves Kant's basic position intact, the latter compels us to entertain certain important revisions, forcing us to grant that education is not exclusively a relation between human beings, as Kant maintains, and that some nonhuman entities might themselves educate and be educated. Moreover, AI might force us to rethink Kant's fundamental question ‘What is the human being?’ itself. I conclude, however, that notwithstanding the challenges AI poses, Kant's perspective retains its relevance even if it might benefit from supplementation and revision in light of post‐ and transhumanist perspectives.
Interest in the role of casuistry and casuistical questions in Kant's Doctrine of Virtue (DV), i.e. the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals, has grown in recent years. My own position is ...formulated in Schuessler (2012, in German), the main thesis of which will be retained here in an updated form and with some shifts of emphasis. I hold that the casuistical questions concerning perfect duties in the DV are not intended to represent casuistry in Kant's sense. Casuistry and casuistical questions are neither equivalent in the DV nor do they serve the same purposes.
Immanuel Kant famously wants us to think for ourselves. However, thinking collaboratively is often preferable to solitary thinking, especially in educational contexts. In this paper, I argue that ...Kant does not advocate a problematic form of epistemic or pedagogical individualism. For my argument, I focus on the area that, one might suspect, lends itself the least to collaborative reasoning on Kant's framework: morality founded in rational a priori structures. I show that Kant is aware of both the prospects and limits of reasoning on one's own and with others. According to Kant, openness, rooted in an attitude of mutual trust, is required to reason well with others. Kant, however, does underestimate the significance of diversity for collaborative reasoning.
XIV—Kant on the Ethics of Belief Cohen, Alix
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
December 2014, 2014-12-00, 20141201, Volume:
114, Issue:
3pt3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and ...arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to the same rational norm.
According to a widespread view, Kant's claim that moral wrongness has its ground in a contradiction underlying every immoral action is a “bluff” rooted in “dogmatic moralism”. Ever since Benjamin ...Constant's exchange with Kant, counterexamples have played a crucial role in showing why Kant's “universalization procedure” fails to determine the moral validity of our judgments. Despite recent attempts to bring Kant's ethics closer to Aristotle's, these counterexamples have prevailed. Most recently, Jesse Prinz has launched another attack along the same lines. Prinz insists that Kant's universalization procedure fundamentally begs the question and fails to generate plausible results. Even authors who are very sympathetic to Kant, such as Allen Wood, have tried to downplay universalization, focusing instead on other formulations of the categorical imperative. In this paper, I respond directly to four of the most prominent counterexamples. In each case, I aim to show how we can uphold Kant's fundamental claim that the universal law formulation of the categorical imperative articulates the form of our particular moral judgments.
This article offers a new interpretation of Kant's cosmopolitanism and his anti-colonialism in Toward Perpetual Peace. Kant's changing position has been the subject of extensive debates that have, ...however, not recognized the central place of colonialism in the political, economic, and military debates in Europe in Kant's writings. Based on historical evidence not previously considered alongside Perpetual Peace, I suggest that Kant's leading concern at the time of writing is the negative effect of European expansionism and intra-European rivalry over colonial possessions on the possibility of peace in Europe. Because of the lack of affinity between colonial conflict and his philosophy of history, Kant must adjust his concept of antagonism to distinguish between war between particular dyads, in particular spaces, and with particular non-state actors. I examine the implications of this argument for Kant's system of Right and conclude that his anti-colonialism co-exists with hierarchical views of race.
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