Pre´cis of Heidegger,Language, and World-disclosure

It is argued that Heidegger should be seen as something of a Kantian Idealist. Like Kant, Heidegger distinguishes two standpoints (transcendental and empirical) which we can occupy when we ask the question whether natural things depend on us. He agrees with Kant that from the empirical or human standpoint we are justified in saying that natural things do not depend on us. But in contrast with Kant, Heidegger argues that from the transcendental standpoint we can say neither that natural things do depend on us, nor that they do not. His reasons for saying this, however, represent an attempt to rework both Kant's temporal idealism and his temporal interpretation of the concept of an object (which shows up in Heidegger as a temporal interpretation of being). Heidegger suggests that Kant was led astray into a transcendental idealism about natural entities, because he did not understand the implications of transcendental idealism about being.     

Kant and the determinacy of intuition

A central issue in debates about Kant and nonconceptualism concerns the nature of intuition. There is sharp disagreement among Kant scholars about both whether, prior to conceptualization, mere intuition can be considered conscious and, if so, how determinate this consciousness is. In this article, I argue that Kant regards pre-synthesized intuition as conscious but indeterminate. To make this case, I contextualize Kant's position through the work of H.S. Reimarus, a predecessor of Kant who influenced his views on animals, infants, and the role of attention. I use Reimarus to clarify Kant's otherwise ambiguous commitments on the determinacy of intuition in animals and newborns, and the role attention, concepts, and judgment play in making intuited contents determinate. This contextualization helps to shed light on Kant's discussion of pre-synthesized intuition in the threefold synthesis of the A-Deduction by demonstrating that Kant's theory of mind in the deduction offers transcendental grounding for empirical accounts of infant development like Kant and Reimarus's. The upshot is a Kant at odds with many recent interpretations of his theory of mind: pre-synthesized intuition is conscious but indeterminate.     

Intuition and Nature in Kant and Goethe

Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic achievement and what were taken to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself.     

KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM,FREEDOM AND THE DIVINE MIND1

Without denying the importance of a range of independent epistemic and metaphysical considerations, I argue that there is an irreducibly theological dimension to the emergence of Kant's transcendental idealism. Creative tasks carried out by the divine mind in the pre‐critical works become assigned to the human noumenal mind, which is conceived of as the (created) source of space, time and causation. Kant makes this shift in order to protect the possibility of transcendental freedom. I show that Kant has significant theological difficulties ascribing such transcendental freedom to creatures in relation to God, and that he intends transcendental idealism to be a solution to these difficulties. I explain how this provides Kant with a powerful motivation and reason for denying the so‐called “neglected alternative”, and conclude by suggesting that the nature of any theological response to Kant will depend upon some fundamental options about how to conceive of the relationship between the creator and creation.     

GARRETT ON THE THEOLOGICAL OBJECTION TO HUME'S COMPATIBILISM

Between 1927 and 1936, Martin Heidegger devoted almost one thousand pages of close textual commentary to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between Kant and Heidegger by providing a fresh analysis of two central texts: Heidegger's 1927/8 lecture course Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and his 1929 monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I argue that to make sense of Heidegger's reading of Kant, one must resolve two questions. First, how does Heidegger's Kant understand the concept of the transcendental? Second, what role does the concept of a horizon play in Heidegger's reconstruction of the Critique? I answer the first question by drawing on Cassam's model of a self-directed transcendental argument (‘The role of the transcendental within Heidegger's Kant’), and the second by examining the relationship between Kant's doctrine that ‘pure, general logic’ abstracts from all semantic content and Hume's attack on metaphysics (‘The role of the horizon within Heidegger's Kant’). I close by sketching the implications of my results for Heidegger's own thought (‘From Heidegger's Kant to Sein und Zeit’). Ultimately, I conclude that Heidegger's commentary on the Critical system is defined, above all, by a single issue: the nature of the ‘form’ of intentionality.     

Bolzano and Kant on the Nature of Logic

Here I revisit Bolzano's criticisms of Kant on the nature of logic. I argue that while Bolzano is correct in taking Kant to conceive of the traditional logic as a science of the activity of thinking rather than the content of thought, he is wrong to charge Kant with a failure to identify and examine this content itself within logic as such. This neglects Kant's own insistence that traditional logic does not exhaust logic as such, since it must be supplemented by a transcendental logic that will in fact study nothing other than thought's content. Once this feature of Kant's views is brought to light, a much deeper accord emerges between the two thinkers than has hitherto been appreciated, on both the nature of the content that is at issue in logic and the sense of logic's generality and formality.     

Kant,Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself

I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self‐respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.     

Varieties of Reflection in Kant's Logic

For Kant, ‘reflection’ (Überlegung, Reflexion) is a technical term with a range of senses. I focus here on the senses of reflection that come to light in Kant's account of logic, and then bring the results to bear on the distinction between ‘logical’ and ‘transcendental’ reflection that surfaces in the Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. Although recent commentary has followed similar cues, I suggest that it labours under a blind spot, as it neglects Kant's distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ general logic. The foundational text of existing interpretations is a passage in Logik Jäsche that appears to attribute to Kant the view that reflection is a mental operation involved in the generation of concepts from non-conceptual materials. I argue against the received view by attending to Kant's division between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ general logic, identifying senses of reflection proper to each, and showing that none accords well with the received view. Finally, to take account of Kant's notion of transcendental reflection I show that we need to be attentive to the concerns of applied logic and how they inform the domain-relative transcendental logic that Kant presents in the first Critique.     

Does Philosophy Require a Weak Transcendental Approach?

Despite any shortcomings of Kant's transcendental philosophy, the spirit (rather than the letter) of Kant's approach is correct. In particular, Kant is correct to believe (1) an accurate account of the types of “access” humans possess to internal and empirical content should form the groundwork for epistemic and ethical investigation and (2) epistemic and ethical investigations cannot successfully circumvent this groundwork. In this context, the term “access” concerns the mental processes that render internal and external experience possible. In supporting the above claims, this article outlines and defends what can be considered a weak version of Kant's transcendental approach. This weaker approach does not require the achievement of synthetic a priori judgments, which permit deductive conclusions concerning possible experience (as opposed to a strong approach, which maintains these requirements).     

Does Kant'sMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science fill a gap in theCritique of Pure Reason?

In 1792 and 1798 Kant noticed two basic problems with hisMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MAdN) which opened a crucial gap in the Critical system as a whole. Why is theMAdN so important? I show that the Analogies of Experience form an integrated proof of transeunt causality. This is central to Kant's ‘answer’ to Hume. This proof requires explicating the empirical concept of matter as “the moveable in space”, it requires the specifically metaphysical principle that every physical event has an external cause, and it requires a metaphysical principle regarding the individuation of spatio-temporal things. These three doctrines are not defended in the firstCritique, but only in theMAdN. Kant's transcendental analysis of the conditions of experience thus requires the “special metaphysics” of theMAdN. This marks an important shift in Kant's view of the metaphysical basis of the transcendental philosophy.     

Once More unto the Breach: Kant and Race

The last thirty years has seen an explosion of literature on Kant and race. Once overlooked essays and notes in which Kant expresses contempt for nonwhite people and support for slavery have been brought to light, and many scholars have wrestled with the question of how a philosopher who stressed the equal dignity of all human beings could hold such views. This article tries to reframe the debate over these issues. It begins by reviewing the racist texts in Kant's corpus and the responses to them proposed by scholars like Charles Mills (to whom the paper is dedicated), Robert Bernasconi, and Pauline Kleingeld. It then introduces elements of Kant's philosophical development that gave Kant reason to renounce his racism—whether or not he actually did so—from about the time of the Groundwork onward. Finally, it turns to the question of what Kant's racism can tell us about his moral philosophy—and perhaps about moral philosophy in general.     

Kant and Husserl on the Contents of Perception

This paper focuses on the contents of perception in Kant's first Critique and Husserl's later writings. Both Kant and Husserl are known for their appeal to synthesis in their transcendental accounts of perceptual experience and objective judgment. Especially regarding Kant, the precise nature of perceptual synthesis has recently been the cause of much debate. Whereas some argue that for Kant perception must have nonconceptual content, others believe he is a conceptualist. After offering an alternative solution to this interpretative problem in Kant's philosophy, I turn to Husserl's later theory of perception. My main claims here are that Husserl departs from Kant specifically regarding (i) the sort of synthetic contents that govern affective perception and (ii) the role of conceptual capacities in the contents of attentive perception.     

A mereological argument for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves

Kant's published arguments for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves have not been well received. I argue that Kant has available to himself an argument for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves that is premised upon a disparity between the compositional structure of the intelligible world and the structure of space and time. I argue that Kant was unwaveringly committed to the premises of this argument throughout his career and that he was aware of their idealistic implications. I also argue that this argument is consistent with Kant's restrictive mature epistemology. If my argument is successful, then even if Kant's published arguments for transcendental idealism fail, we need not regard his ambitious metaphysical project as a failure.     

NEWTON AND KANT: QUANTITY OF MATTER IN THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE

Immanuel Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) provides metaphysical foundations for the application of mathematics to empirically given nature. The application that Kant primarily has in mind is that achieved in Isaac Newton's Principia (1687). Thus, Kant's first chapter, the Phoronomy, concerns the mathematization of speed or velocity, and his fourth chapter, the Phenomenology, concerns the empirical application of the Newtonian notions of true or absolute space, time, and motion. This paper concentrates on Kant's second and third chapters—the Dynamics and the Mechanics, respectively—and argues that they are best read as providing a transcendental explanation of the conditions for the possibility of applying the (mathematical) concept of quantity of matter to experience. Kant again has in mind the empirical measures of this quantity that Newton fashions in the Principia, and he aims to make clear, in particular, how Newton achieves a universal measure for all bodies whatsoever by projecting the static quantity of terrestrial weight into the heavens by means of the theory of universal gravitation. Kant is not attempting to prove a priori what Newton has established empirically but, rather, to clarify the character of Newton's mathematization by building Newton's empirical measures into the very concept of matter that is articulated in the Metaphysical Foundations.     

Kant's Quasi‐Transcendental Argument for a Necessary and Universal Evil Propensity in Human Nature

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant's stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have a transcendental form (called quasi‐transcendental because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof.     

Practical knowledge and the subjectivity of truth in Kant and Kierkegaard: The cover of skepticism

Kant developed a distinctive method of philosophical argumentation, the method of transcendental argumentation, which continues to have contemporary philosophical promise. Yet there is considerable disagreement among Kant's interpreters concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. On ambitious interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to establish certain necessary features of the world from the conditions of our thinking about or experiencing the world; they are world‐directed. On modest interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to show that certain beliefs have a special status that renders them invulnerable to skeptical doubts; they are belief‐directed. This paper brings Kierkegaard's thesis of the “subjectivity of truth” to bear on these questions concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. I focus on Kant's argument for the postulate of God's existence in his Critique of Practical Reason and show that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us construe the argument as both belief and world directed. Yet I also argue that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us understand the source of our dissatisfaction with Kant's transcendental arguments: It can help us understand that dissatisfaction as an expression of what Stanley Cavell calls the “cover of skepticism,” the conversion of metaphysical finitude into intellectual lack.     

Kant's Commitment to Metaphysics of Morals

A definitive feature of Kant's moral philosophy is its rationalism. Kant insists that moral theory, at least at its foundation, cannot take account of empirical facts about human beings and their circumstances in the world. This is the core of Kant's commitment to ‘metaphysics of morals’, and it is what he sees as his greatest contribution to moral philosophy. The paper clarifies what it means to be committed to metaphysics of morals, why Kant is committed to it, and where he thinks empirical considerations may enter moral theory. The paper examines recent work of contemporary Kantians (Barbara Herman, Allen Wood, and Christine Korsgaard) who argue that there is a central role for empirical considerations in Kant's moral theory. Either these theorists interpret Kant himself as permitting empirical considerations to enter, or they propose to extend Kant's theory so as to allow them to enter. With some qualifications, I argue that these interpretive trends are not supported by the texts, and that the proposed extensions are not plausibly Kantian. Kant's insistence on the exclusion of empirical considerations from the foundations of moral theory is not an incidental feature of his thought which might be modified while the rest remains unchanged. Rather, it is the very centre of his endeavours in moral philosophy. If we disagree with it, I argue, we have grounds for moving to a distinctly different theoretical framework.     

Kant's transcendental idealism and contemporary anti‐realism

This paper compares Kant's transcendental idealism with three main groups of contemporary anti‐realism, associated with Wittgenstein, Putnam, and Dummett, respectively. The kind of anti‐realism associated with Wittgenstein has it that there is no deep sense in which our concepts are answerable to reality. Associated with Putnam is the rejection of four main ideas: theoryindependent reality, the idea of a uniquely true theory, a correspondence theory of truth, and bivalence. While there are superficial similarities between both views and Kant's, I find more significant differences. Dummettian anti‐realism, too, clearly differs from Kant's position: Kant believes in verification‐transcendent reality, and transcendental idealism is not a theory of meaning or truth. However, I argue that part of the Dummettian position is extremely useful for understanding part of Kant's position – his idealism about the appearances of things. I argue that Kant's idealism about appearances can be expressed as the rejection of experiencetranscendent reality with respect to appearances.     

Kant, Wittgenstein, and Transcendental Chaos

Wittgenstein sought to uphold ‘realism without empiricism’. This paper identifies in Wittgestein's and in Kant's philosophies a common line of argument that provides a genuinely transcendental argument for (not from) mental content externalism. This line of argument has not been previously recognized in either thinker's work. The common thesis defended by both Wittgenstein and Kant alike is that, if we human beings did not inhabit a natural world structured by a recognizable degree of similarity and variety among the objects or events we perceive, we could not so much as think, so we could not so much as be self‐conscious. (This line of argument is independent of Kant's idealism, and ultimately shows that Kant's transcendental idealism is false and unsupportable.)     

Kant and Degrees of Responsibility

Kant views every human action as either entirely determined by natural necessity or entirely free. In viewing human action this way, it is unclear how he can account for degrees of responsibility. In this article, I consider three recent attempts to accommodate degrees of responsibility within Kant's framework, but argue that none of them are satisfying. In the end, I claim that transcendental idealism constrains Kant such that he cannot provide an adequate account of degrees of responsibility.