Holly L. Wilson

In the Critique of Pure Reason and in his lectures on logic, Kant distin- guishes between philosophy determined by the worldly concept (Weltbe- griff or in sensu cosmico) and philosophy determined by the scholastic con- cept (Schulbegriff ). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defines the worldly concept as that “which relates to that in which everyone necessa- rily has an interest” which can be opposed to the scholastic concept of philosophy which is limited by optionally chosen ends. Kant opposes the essential and final ends of the worldly concept of philosophy to arbi- trary ends of scholastic philosophy, which are limited by the fact that it is based on a specific kind of skill. In his lectures on Logic, Kant identifies the worldly concept of philosophy as “a science of the highest maxim for the use of our reason” and as the “science of the relation of all cognition and of all use of reason to the ultimate end of human reason, to which, as the highest, all other ends are subordinated, and in which they must all unite to form a unity.”

Kant scholars are divided on whether Kant’s moral philosophy could be used to support moral consideration for animals. A good environmental ethics that has something of relevance to say to the threat of climate change requires that at the very least Kant can provide support for the preservation of the biosphere. We cannot get this directly out of his moral philosophy but we can get this out of his theory of human nature, not because humans are also animals, but because human beings develop technical skills that allow them to see a biosphere as a biosphere and understand the interconnected relationship between the biosphere, the geosphere, and the hydrosphere which are all affected by climate change realities. In addition, because of the natural predisposition to humanity, human beings are also oriented to human benevolence and happiness. Human beings are the only species that can perceive the connection between the climate, biosphere, and geosphere and human happiness. Thus, human beings are exceptional, and it is to human beings that we should look to make changes to our energy consumption habits so that we can care for the biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere for the sake of maintaining a stable climate that benefits human civilization, human happiness, and also animal welfare. Kant’s reflections on the Lisbon Earthquake (1755) are seminal for understanding how he would respond to the crisis of climate change. His position is that humans must reevaluate what they consider is the appropriate approach to human happiness. We can work out an adequate environmental ethics using Kant’s theory of human natural predispositions which include animality, technical capacities, capacity for happiness, as well as the moral predisposition.

This article evaluates the positions Kant took in his works on race that have been used to argue that Kant developed a racist theory of race and hence also shared a racist ideology. In doing so, we will demonstrate that he was in fact theorizing as a natural scientist [Naturforscher] engaging in the science of natural history and heredity (which today is encompassed by the field of genetics). Kant was a proto-geneticist doing legitimate science and not attempting to prove that there was a hierarchy of races. This article concludes that Kant’s articles on natural history and heredity cannot be used to establish he was a racist nor that he shared an ideology of racism. This article builds on Kant’s arguments in his four articles on natural history to show that some of the statements he made that appear to be racist are in fact applications of the principles of heredity to human behavior. Our position is that Kant referred to these essays as concerned with the concept of race, but his main focus was not on designating populations in terms of racial identity to stigmatize them and create a hierarchy, but rather on defining race on the basis of the unfailing heritability of skin color. He then explored incidentally whether he could extend the concept of heritability to explain human behavior. We conclude that it is important to define what we mean by racism and that it is also important to interpret Kant within his own context while putting our own biases in brackets.

The narrow question of the genesis (Entstehung) of Kant’s anthropology lecture has been captivating German scholarship on his anthropology for more than a century. Sides have been taken and disputes have arisen, but a final determination has yet to be reached. Partly this is so, because Kant did not tell us why he began to teach anthropology, and partly this is so, because there is so much ambiguity in the sources. An argument can be made for any number of reasons for the inception of his anthropology lectures. I made a strong case for the inception of the anthropology lectures in Kant’s physical geography lectures (Wilson 2007: 8-26). In this paper, I will make an argument for the varied sources that influenced Kant in the development of the anthropology lecture. There is not just one source but several sources that influenced Kant. He was influenced by his physical geography lectures, his own precritical writings, his metaphysics lecture, Baumgarten, and finally also by the Thomasius school’s Klugheitslehre (theory of prudence). All of these sources can be found in the earliest writings and student notes we have from Kant. It can be established that all of these sources influenced the lectures as they developed over time and even the book that he published in 1798.

In a recent New York Times article, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute,” Andrew Revkin reports that hundreds of private emails have been stolen by means of computer hacking from a computer server at a British university. The apparent reason these emails were pilfered is because they expose years of discussions among scientists working on global climate change science. It is assumed that the theft was done on the behalf of mostly American skeptics of global climate change. The skeptics were looking for evidence of a scientific conspiracy to conceal evidence contrary to the published findings. Meanwhile, the emails show that the scientists are quite aware that their findings are being challenged. The skeptics, on the other hand, are being exposed as having ties to businesses whose profits derive from fossil fuels and carbon-based technologies. So it turns out, on the face of it, that the American problem with the climate debate is an issue between science and business. That, of course, is too broad a generalization to stand up to scrutiny.

Kant holds in his works on morality that prudence is not free, because only action under the moral law is free. He also holds that acting on prudent reasons is incompatible with the moral law. If one explores his lectures on anthropology, however, one has reason to believe that not only is prudent action free in some sense as freedom of choice, but it is also not incompatible with moral action, since it does not necessitate using other human beings as mere means, even though it is about using other human beings as ends to one’s happiness. This article will show how Kant holds these positions in his lectures on anthropology.

Robert B. Louden has produced a book that is unique in its attempt to make a wide variety of Kant’s writings relevant to his ethical theory. The main point of the book is that in addition to Kant’s moral theory which is purely based on reason, the application of this theory requires empirical and hence impure knowledge of human beings. Kant calls the empirical part of his ethics “practical anthropology” and Louden believes that, though Kant did not complete this project as a separate book, the elements of a practical anthropology can be “squeezed out” of Kant’s works on education, anthropology, art, religion, and history.

The question that has not yet been dealt with is why Kant was interested in pragmatic anthropology, and how it developed in relationship to his critical thinking. In the first chapter, I discuss the origin of the anthropology lectures. I argue that the lectures did not develop out of the empirical psychology parts of Kant's metaphysics lectures, as some German scholars assert, but rather they evolved out of Kant's interests in cosmology and out of his lectures on physical geography. ;For this reason, the Anthropology cannot in any way be identified with psychology. It is "knowledge of the world," not of the inner psychology of human beings. Therefore, it can have a critical nature, whereas psychology can never be critically founded. I then show that the themes of the Anthropology are present in Kant's early works on natural philosophy, cosmology, physical geography, and race. ;In the second chapter, I argue that the practical anthropology, which is the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals, is not pragmatic anthropology, though a part of it, and, therefore, pragmatic anthropology is not the empirical part of his moral theory. The transcendental and critical grounds of the Pragmatic Anthropology do not lie only in Kant's moral theory, but also in the Critique of Teleological Judgment, insofar as reflective judgment is the critical faculty that founds his transcendental anthropology, a theory of human nature in general which is presupposed throughout the Pragmatic Anthropology. ;I lay out the four predispositions which are the explicit theme of the Anthropology and show how these are teleological. I conclude with some reflections on how we might consider the relationship between the moral and natural destinies of human beings. The intent is not to show the anthropological presuppositions of Kant's critical works, but rather to show that his anthropological interests are not in conflict with his critical philosophy

There is growing interest in Immanuel Kant's doctrine of radical evil, and Pablo Muchnik's book succeeds in showing how this concept has both an a priori grounding and an empirical and historical basis. In the literature, Henry Allison has argued the transcendental grounding for the concept of radical evil, while Allen Wood has maintained that the concept has to be supported by reference to empirical realities. Allison holds that Kant's claim that human beings have a universal radical propensity toward evil is an a priori claim not based in experience, whereas Wood believes that the truth of Kant's position can only be supported in the principle of unsociable-sociability, an empirical concept rooted in the species' character. Muchnik leans toward Allison, as he finds that radical evil is rooted in the Gesinnung (disposition) rather than in particular actions, a description of which would be empirical. He argues that a person's Gesinnung, according to Kant, is good or evil depending upon the principle of maxim selection a person gives herself. Evil corrupts the basis of all maxims. However, Muchnik thinks that Allison does not provide a sufficient justification for the propensity to evil, partly because Kant does not provide us with this justification either and because evil is not analytically contained in the notion of "man." Instead, Muchnik reconstructs the justification for Kant's claim of radical evil in what Kant has to say in the preface to his work Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Kant does use empirical evidence negatively to show that it does not contradict his philosophical defense, so there cannot be a true transcendental argument to support the thesis of radical evil in human nature. Rather than being a transcendental argument, it is more of a metaphysical argument that offers a principle by which we think the a priori condition under which alone radical evil, whose concept is given empirically, can be further determined. Muchnik does not provide us with reasons why Wood's project of establishing the widespread empirical grounds for radical evil in the principle of unsociable-sociability fails to supply us with the sufficient justification for the propensity to evil. So Muchnik believes the proof of the propensity to evil is under the cover of the highest good and is found in both the a priori tendency to place the claims of happiness over morality and in the species' tendency toward unsociable-sociability. [End Page 462] Muchnik defends Kant's position that radical evil is not diabolical evil, but rather a tendency to place the claims of self-love before the moral law, against interpreters such as Claudia Card and Richard Bernstein, who do not believe self-love is a sufficient motivation to impel the immorality of murder and genocide. These interpreters believe that a diabolical will must be behind such horrific acts. But Muchnik rightly defends Kant's position that even these horrific acts are motivated by self-love, because doing evil for evil's sake is not possible for a finite and free human will. A truly corrupt will is incapable of being legislative and would create a self-defeating motivational structure. Human beings must always rationalize their actions, and hence Eichmann justified his evil by claiming he was only doing the will of his Führer. Hitler himself justified his actions under eugenics and the betterment of the species. However, what they are doing in their justification was systematically ignoring the limits that other agents impose on their actions. Muchnik argues that the "good heart" can play the role of a mediator between the a priori nature of the moral law and the empirical nature of human nature. Kant develops a typology of evil hearts: weakness of the heart, impurity of the heart, and finally depravity of heart. In each case it is self-love that underlies the failures in these hearts. At the same time, Muchnik concludes that evil cannot be found in the species' natural predispositions to good, since these are a priori toward the good and not toward evil, and hence he argues that neither Allison nor Wood can ground the concept of radical evil in these natural predispositions.

Interest in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View has soared in recent years with the publication of books such as Reinhard Brandt’s Kri- tischer Kommentar zu Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1999), Robert B. Louden’s Kant’s Impure Ethics (2000), Patrick Frierson’s Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy (2003), Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain’s Essays on Kant’s Anthropology (2003), as well as my own Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology (2006). Within the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, an English translation of Kant’s Anthropology lectures has become available. This edited collection is the first book to deal systematically with the main topics covered in all of Kant’s anthropology lectures found in the newly translated Lectures on Anthropology (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant).

Kant's theory of morality has been criticized by some as formalistic and rigoristic since Hegel, and various attempts have been made as a rejoinder. Some Kantians take these objections seriously, because as Barbara Herman puts it, "part of the task of the moral theory is to explicate the conception of rationality necessary for morality to have content." 1 A moral theory has to be applicable to the concrete human situation in which action takes place. To attend to these empirical condi­tions, however, has been perceived by other Kantians as a threat to the universal validity of Kant's moral philosophy. This position; too, has credibility and perhaps that stems from Kant's claim that anthropology can serve neither as the origin of the moral law nor as the justification for its validity. Nonetheless, a law that is valid, but inapplicable is not relevant to human beings.

This is a very important book for Kantian practical philosophy, because it defends the essential consistency and coherence of Kant's transcendental idealism and his moral philosophy. At the same time, Allison's careful textual work along with his account of Kant's transcendental distinction between the intelligible and empirical character of human agency helps to clarify passages which have plagued some of the best interpreters of Kant's practical philosophy, such as Lewis White Beck and Allen Wood. Allison's primary objective is to give a defense of Kant's incompatibilist conception of freedom which "constitutes the common thread running through all three critiques". Although he succeeds in this objective, because of his insightful and scholarly argumentation, one is still left with many questions concerning the relationship between the "two points of views" of freedom and mechanism in Kantian moral philosophy, and Allison admits he has not resolved this.

In this essay I show that Kant intended his anthropology lectures and book, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, to be a Klugheitslehre (theory of prudence). The essay draws on many quotes from these sources to show that Kant wanted to develop a theory of how to use other people for one’s own ends. Although so much of the lectures and book are in conversation with Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, there are enough references to Klugheit (prudence) and klug (clever) action to support this thesis. Prudence is a skill that human beings should develop and hence is not excluded from human life even though it is not the basis of morality. The purpose of Klugheit is to achieve happiness but the means to that happiness involves using other people for one’s own ends. In order to use others as a means to one’s own ends, a person must in someway satisfy the inclinations of the other person so that they cooperate in one’s ends. However it is also possible to dominate another person and use them as well if they are dominated by a passion but this is not prudent since it does not achieve happiness except in the case of a husband and wife. Kant’s distinction between Weltklugheit and Privatklugheit also appears to be confirmed in that he advances the idea that sociable means of gaining the cooperation of others (Privatklugheit) leads to the lasting happiness of a person and to the development of civilization.