Kenneth R. Westphal

Rousseau's Du contrat social develops an important, unjustly neglected type of theory, which I call 'Natural Law Constructivism' ('NLC'), which identifies and justifies strictly objective basic moral principles, with no appeal to moral realism or its alternatives, nor to elective agreement, nor to prudentialist reasoning. The Euthyphro Question marks a dilemma in moral theory which highlights relations between artifice and arbitrariness. These relations highlight the significance of Hume's founding insight into NLC, and how NLC addresses Hobbes's insight that our most fundamental moral problems concern social coordination. Part 2 systematically re-examines the core of Rousseau's theory of justice to show that it assigns no constitutive role to contractual agreement in identifying or justifying basic normative principles. Part 3 highlights his NLC

Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist account of the basic principles of justice which justifies their strict objectivity without invoking moral realism nor moral anti- or irrealism. Westphal explores how Hume developed a kind of constructivism for basic property rights and for government, and how Kant greatly refined Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative account. Westphal contends that Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism.

Kant’s and Hegel’s transcendental argument for mental-content externalism breaks the deadlock between ‘internal’ and genuine realists. This argument shows that human beings can only be self-conscious in a world that provides a humanly recognizable regularity and variety among the things (or events) we sense. This feature of the world cannot result from human thought or language. Hence semantic arguments against realism can only be developed if realism about the world is true. Some of Putnam’s arguments for internal realism are taken as cases in point, and criticized accordingly. Pragmatic realists can use this transcendental argument, because its strong modal claims are consistent with falliblist accounts of justification.

This book provides an important opportunity to explore Hegel's relation to Kant. Hegel claims that a proper criticism of a philosophy must be sufficiently immanent, detailed, and systematic to show that and how a more adequate view is introduced and justified by a thorough comprehension of the merits and deficiencies of another view. However, Hegel's explicit criticisms of Kant cannot be credited with meeting this exacting standard. His lectures on Kant do not get beyond an overview, and though he makes some detailed criticisms in the conceptual preliminaries of the lesser Logic and in a number of remarks in the larger Logic, these criticisms appear isolated. While there is much important criticism of Kant in Hegel's early writings, those criticisms are embedded in Hegel's still embryonic philosophy, and as such do not constitute a thorough and mature Hegelian critique. Furthermore, Hegel scholarship has yet to make up this decisive gap in Hegel's purported proof of his own philosophy; far too little, of far too little detail and scope, has been written on Hegel's critical relation to the critical philosophy.

This chapter considers the centrality of principles in Kant’s moral philosophy, their distinctively ‘Kantian’ character, why Kant presents a ‘metaphysical’ system of moral principles and how these ‘formal’ principles are to be used in practice. These points are central to how Kant thinks pure reason can be practical. These features have often puzzled Anglophone readers, in part due to focusing on Kant’s Groundwork, to the neglect of his later works in moral philosophy, in which the theoretical preliminaries of that first essay are properly articulated. In part, however, these puzzles stem, directly or indirectly, from Kant’s opposition to moral empiricism, which is bound to puzzle Anglophone readers, whose default orientation is empiricist. Accordingly, particular attention is paid to Kant’s reasons for rejecting moral empiricism and for developing an alternative to it, to Kant’s account of how his universalization tests serve as criteria of morally obligatory, permissible or prohibited actions and to his account of what is morally wrong with actions which violate those criteria. Examining these points provides a compelling synopsis of Kant’s system of moral principles, centring on the key terms ‘practical reason’, ‘law’, ‘maxim’ and ‘Categorical Imperative’.

Empirical investigations use empirical methods, data and evidence. This banal observation appears to favour empiricism, especially in philosophy of science, though no rationalist ever denied their importance. Natural sciences often provide what appear to be, and are taken by scientists as, realist, causal explanations of natural phenomena. Empiricism has never been congenial to scientific realism. Bas van Fraassen’s ‘Constructive Empiricism’ purports that realist interpretations of any scientific theory in principle always transcend whatever can be justified by that theory’s empirical adequacy, and that ‘explanations’ are merely pragmatic, insofar as they are context-specific to the presuppositions of whomever poses the question an explanation is to answer. Here I argue that ‘Constructive Empiricism’ rests upon a series of flawed presumptions about natural science and about epistemology. To do so I draw upon two main resources. One resource is the constraints upon specifically cognitive reference to particulars, first identified by Kant (and later by Evans). The second is William Harper’s (2011) brilliant re-analysis and defence of Newton’s Principia, which shows that, and how, Newton justified his realism about gravitational force. One surprise is that Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (examined in §3) directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of scientific method (§4), which strongly supports his realism about gravitational force (summarised in §2). A further surprise is that Hegel first recognised that this semantics of singular cognitive reference directly and strongly supports Newton’s methodological Rule 4 of experimental philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force, and about distance forces generally. The textual and exegetical issues these attributions require I examine elsewhere. Here I make these important findings available to philosophers and historians of science.

According to Kant, justifying the application of mathematics to objects in natural science requires metaphysically constructing the concept of matter. Kant develops these constructions in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MAdN). Kant’s specific aim is to develop a dynamic theory of matter to replace corpuscular theory. In his Preface Kant claims completely to exhaust the metaphysical doctrine of body, but in the General Remark to MAdN ch. 2, “Dynamics,” Kant admits that once matter is reconceived as basic forces, it is no longer possible to construct the concept of matter. I argue that Kant’s admission is only the tip of the problem, and that none of Kant’s commentators has fully grasped the problems infecting the MAdN that underlie Kant’s admission. I show that Kant’s proof that matter consists of forces is fallacious. I then re-analyze the circularity in Kant’s definition of density, criticizing both Adickes’ formulations and his later dissolution of it. I also show that a third circularity infects the relations between Kant’s treatment of “Dynamics” and “Mechanics” (MAdN ch. 3). These three fundamental problems demonstrate the untenability of Kant’s metaphysical method, and they require the radical revision of the relation between mathematics and metaphysics Kant undertakes in his opus postumum. I show that some of Kant’s most surprising and critical later claims about the Critical philosophy are correct, and that they require the sorts of remedies Kant contemplates in the opus postumum. (I defend the essentially correct analyses offered by Burkhard Tuschling and Eckart Forster against criticisms by Michael Friedman.)

Though concise and introductory, this book argues inter alia that Dretske’s information-theoretic epistemology must take into account that many of our information channels are socially constructed, not least through learning concepts and information. These social aspects of human knowledge are consistent with realism about the objects of our empirical knowledge. It further argues that, though important, Margaret Gilbert’s social ontology in principle can neither accommodate nor account for the most fundamental social dimensions of human cognition.

Hume and contemporary Humeans contend that moral sentiments form the sole and sufficient basis of moral judgments. This thesis is criticised by appeal to Hume’s theory of justice, which shows that basic principles of justice are required to form and to maintain society, which is indispensable to human life, and that acting according to, or violating, these principles is right, or wrong, regardless of anyone’s sentiments, motives or character. Furthermore, Hume’s theory of justice shows how the principles of justice are artificial without being arbitrary. In this regard, Hume’s theory belongs to the unjustly neglected modern natural law tradition. Some key merits of this strand in Hume’s theory are explicated by linking it to Kant’s constructivist method of identifying and justifying practical principles (à la O’Neill), and by showing how and why Hegel adopted and further developed Kant’s constructivism by re-integrating it with Hume’s central natural law concern with our actual social practices. (Slightly revised English translation by the author of „Von der Konvention zur Sittlichkeit. Humes Begründung einer Rechtsethik aus nach-Kantischer Perspektive“, on which see below.)

The passages translated here show that Hegel espoused ‘moderate collectivism’, a social ontology consisting in three theses: (1) Individuals are fundamentally social practitioners. Everything a person does, says, or thinks is formed in the context of social practices that provide material and conceptual resources, objects of desire, skills, procedures, techniques, and occasions and permissions for action, etc. (2) What individuals do depends on their own response to their social and natural environment. (3) There are no individuals, no social practitioners, without social practices, and vice versa, there are no social practices without social practitioners, without individuals who learn, participate in, perpetuate, and who modify those social practices as needed to meet their changing needs, aims, and circumstances (including information).

By deepening Austin’s reflections on the ‘open texture’ of empirical concepts, Frederick L. Will defends an ‘externalist’ account of mental content: as human beings we could not think, were we not in fact cognizant of a natural world structured by events and objects with identifiable and repeatable similarities and differences. I explicate and defend Will’s insight by developing a parallel critique of Kant’s and Carnap’s rejections of realism, both of whom cannot account properly for the content of experience. This critique shows that Will has identified a genuinely transcendental basis for defending common-sense realism, without appeal to any high-level theory of knowledge. I then show how Will’s realism undercuts Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism, Michael Williams’ partial defense of skepticism, John Haldane’s attempt to rehabilitate Aquinas’ account of concepts, and how it augments Crispin Wright’s defense of realism.

Three genuinely transcendental conditions for the possibility of self-conscious experience are and can only be material (§§2–4). Identifying these conditions shows that the link between transcendental proof and transcendental idealism is not direct, but must be justified by substantive argument (§§ 4, 5). This illuminates the prospect of separating transcendental proofs from transcendental idealism. Indeed, examining these conditions reveals a powerful strategy for using transcendental proof to defend realism sans phrase. Strikingly, this prospect illuminates some otherwise occluded aspects of post-Kantian German Idealism (§6), and sets an important contemporary philosophical agenda (§7).

Kant's views on revolution have been widely discussed, and commentators have long been astounded that the philosopher who made famous the principle that persons are ends in themselves could reach such abhorent conclusions as that citizens owe unqualified obedience to their supreme ruler. I address an important and ignored sub-issue of this topic: the relations between Kant's doctrine of the division of governmental powers and his doctrine of absolute obedience. I argue that these two doctrines are not compatible; Kant's defense of absolute obedience undermines his own division of powers. Examining exactly why this is the case leads to several further results. First, a constitutional court is crucial to a republic. Second, Kant is closer to a consistent view of government and obedience than first appears. Third, Kant's account of the division of powers was theoretically behind his times. Fourth, there is a crucial distinction between the separation of governmental powers and a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government. Fifth, Kant did grasp the relevant principles governing impeachment - a far more drastic measure than a constitutional court. Finally, most of the principles needed to revise Kant's constitutional theory are already contained in his published writings. Kants Thesen zur Revolution sind viel diskutiert worden, und lange Zeit waren Kommentatoren darüber verwundert, daß der Philosoph, der das Prinzip berühmt gemacht hat, wonach Personen Zwecke an sich selbst sind, insbesondere zu der abschreckenden Schlußfolgerung kommen konnte, die Bürger eines Staates hätten dem Herrscher unbedingten Gehorsam zu leisten. Ich befasse mich mit einem wichtigen und regelmäßig übersehenen Aspekt dieses Problemfeldes: Dem Verhältnis zwischen Kants Lehre von der Gewaltenteilung und seiner These vom absoluten Gehorsam des Staatsbürgers. Ich behaupte, daß diese beiden Lehren nicht miteinander vereinbar sind; Kants Verteidigung des absoluten Gehorsams unterminiert seine Gewaltenteilungsthese. Eine genaue Untersuchung der Frage, warum das so ist, führt zu weiteren Resultaten: Erstens ist ein Verfassungsgericht wesentlich für eine Republik. Zweitens ist Kant näher an einer konsistenten Auffassung von Staat und Gehorsam als dies auf den ersten Blick zu sein scheint. Drittens bleibt Kants Auffassung zur Gewaltenteilung hinter der Entwicklung seiner Zeit zurück. Viertens besteht ein wesentlicher Unterschied zwischen der Trennung der Staatsgewalten einerseits und einem System von "checks and balances" der drei Zweige der Staatslenkung andererseits. Fünftens hat Kant durchaus die relevanten Prinzipien eines "impeachment" erkannt - eine wesentlich drastischere Einrichtung als die eines Verfassungsgerichts. Schließlich sind die meisten der Prinzipien, die für eine Revision von Kants Verfassungstheorie notwendig sind, bereits in seinen eigenen Werken enthalten

Hegel holds that members of a society can only be fully free and autonomous if they enjoy political representation. Hegel grants political representation to the landed aristocracy and to members of corporations. Causal day laborers fall outside both of these groups. Consequently, they lack political representation in Hegel’s state; hence they lack the political resources for full freedom and autonomy. This is a serious problem, but not so serious as Hegel’s marxist critics maintain. I propose two solutions based on Hegel’s institutional principles. First, day laborers typically work in the same industry, and often in the same factory. Once that regularity is established, such labor is no longer casual and it merits recognition through labor contracts and (ultimately) through corporate membership. Second, those workers who remain casual laborers deserve special attention from a government-sponsored agency which organizes and regularizes their training and job placement, and which represents their interests in Hegel’s Estates Assembly. I further suggest that Keynes’s public works strategy for moderating unemployment fits perfectly into Hegel’s institutional framework, and I show (contra Ilting) that Hegel’s exposition of the Crown is properly ordered. The Monarch is the organizational apex of Hegel’s government, but the Estates Assembly culminates Hegel’s program for achieving the political autonomy of individuals.

In Hegel’s Idealism, Robert Pippin contends that Hegel develops a more adequate version of Fichte’s idealism, where the key to idealism lies in the general thesis that there are conditions presupposed by self-conscious judgments about objects. Focusing on this thesis led post-Kantian German idealists to dismiss Kant’s doctrine that space and time are a priori forms of intuition and to develop views of the autonomy of human reason in terms of thought’s self-determination. While Pippin and I agree on some fundamentals, we disagree diametrically about the nature of Hegel’s idealism. Four of my main objections are these. (1) The thesis that there are conditions for self-conscious judgments about objects only entails idealism given certain kinds of conditions (such as Kant’s doctrines about space and time). (2) Hegel expressly denies that ‘the autonomy of thought’ primarily concerns the autonomy of human thinking. (3) Pippin’s interpretation of Hegel’s chapter on ‘Force and Understanding’, which is decisive for his interpretation of Hegel’s idealism, is not borne out by the examples Hegel uses to illustrate and defend his view. (4) Hegel’s frequent use in his Logics of categories that plainly derive from contingent features of our world is not, as Pippin would have it, an ironic concession that marks the reductio ad absurdum of Hegel’s view. On the contrary, such categories and their empirical basis is central to Hegel’s idealism, which is deeply naturalistic and expressly based in the empirical sciences. (1,000 word abstract in: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65.6 (1992):64–65.)

Argues inter alia that Kant and Hegel identified necessary conditions for the possibility of singular cognitive reference that incorporate avant la lettre Evans’ (1975) analysis of identity and predication, that Kant’s and Hegel’s semantics of singular cognitive reference are crucial to McDowell’s account of singular thoughts, and that McDowell has neglected (to the detriment of his own view) these conditions and their central roles in Kant’s and in Hegel’s theories of knowledge. > Reprinted in: J. Lindgaard, ed., John McDowell: Experience, Norm and Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008d), 124–151.

Kant’s justification of possession appears to assume rather than prove its legitimacy. This apparent question-begging has been recapitulated or exacerbated but not resolved in the literature. However, Kant provides a sound justification of limited rights to possess and use things (qualified choses in possession), not of private property rights. Kant’s argument is not purely a priori; it is in Kant’s Critical sense ‘metaphysical’ because it applies the pure a priori ‘Universal Principles of Right’ to the concept of finite rational human agency. This use implicitly involves a ‘Contradiction in Conception’ test, which I explicate in detail. The limited rights to possession and use justified by Kant’s argument suffice for his social contract argument for the legitimacy of the state.

Modern Philosophy bloomed into the Enlightenment, a cultural and philosophical movement still alive today, despite growing criticism. Some recent critics claim (roughly) that the alleged ‘universality’ of Enlightenment reason led directly to the imposition of Eurocentric reason on other, less militarily developed cultures. Some contend that there is no such thing as ‘universal’ reason. I contend that there are serious flaws in the Enlightenment notion of reason resulting from three basic dichotomies: (1) reason versus tradition, (2) knowledge versus customary belief, and (3) individuals versus society. Identifying and remedying these flaws leads, not to the abandonment of rational enlightenment, but to an improved account of human rationality.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains an original and powerful semantics of singular cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science. Here I argue that Kant’s semantics directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of Philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton’s Rule 4 of Philosophy and its role in Newton’s justification of realism about gravitational force (§2). Next I briefly summarize Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (§3), and then show that it is embedded in and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4, and that it rules out not only Cartesian physics (per Harper) but also Cartesian, infallibilist presumptions about empirical justification generally (§4). This result exposes a key fallacy in Bas van Fraassen’s original argument for his anti-realist Constructive Empiricism (§5).

This book is the first detailed study of Kant's method of 'transcendental reflection' and its use in the Critique of Pure Reason to identify our basic human cognitive capacities, and to justify Kant's transcendental proofs of the necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of self-conscious human experience. Kenneth Westphal, in a closely argued internal critique of Kant's analysis, shows that if we take Kant's project seriously in its own terms, the result is not transcendental idealism but realism regarding physical objects. Westphal attends to neglected topics - Kant's analyses of the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold, the 'lifelessness of matter', fallibilism, the semantics of cognitive reference, four externalist aspects of Kant's views, and the importance of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations for the Critique of Pure Reason - that illuminate Kant's enterprise in new and valuable ways. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's theoretical philosophy.

The notion that Hegel repudiated epistemology has had dire consequences for our understanding of Hegel. By disregarding epistemology, Hegel’s expositors often disregarded the general issues central to epistemology of how one can establish or justify a philosophical view. If Hegel did address epistemological issues and tried to justify (not simply to expound) ‘absolute knowledge’, then that disregard would produce skewed interpretations of Hegel. Recent attention to Hegel’s epistemology (e.g., by Klaus Hartmann, Joseph Flay, Robert Pippin, Michael Forster, Terry Pinkard, and Justus Hartnack) is salutary. However, I argue that most of these efforts founder by making key assumptions about epistemology that Hegel clearly rejects. Moreover, many of these efforts exhibit hermeneutic defects that Hegel scholars should consider carefully; most of these interpretations are long on interpretive promise but short on philosophical delivery.

In the conceptual preliminaries of his philosophical Encyclopedia Hegel discusses three approaches to epistemology under the headings of three ‘Attitudes of Thought Toward Objectivity’. The third of these is Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate’ or intuitive knowledge. Hegel’s discussion presumes great familiarity with Jacobi’s highly polemical and now seldom read texts. In this essay I disambiguate and reconstruct Hegel’s discussion of Jacobi, in close consideration of Jacobi’s texts, showing why Hegel finds him important and what Hegel’s objections to his doctrines are. Jacobi’s importance for Hegel lies in three points. First, Hegel agrees with Jacobi’s claim, against Kant, that God and the world are themselves knowable. Second, Hegel must answer Jacobi’s charge that discursive thinking ineluctably leads to determinism and ultimately to nihilism. Third, Hegel’s analysis of Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate knowledge’ reveals some points that are important to Hegel’s metaphysics. Hegel mounts five objections to Jacobi’s doctrine. First, Jacobi’s key term ‘immediacy’ illicitly equivocates among the rejection of three different kinds of ‘mediation’: syllogistic inference, the application of concepts, and representational accounts of perception. Second, Jacobi’s doctrine of a-conceptual knowledge is untenable because one must apply concepts to objects in order identify objects and thus to know what kinds of things known objects are. Third, if a fundamental point of Hegel’s holistic ontology (explained in the essay) is correct, then the identity conditions of things are interdependent, and this interdependence would render ‘immediate’ knowledge impossible. Fourth, Jacobi’s doctrine is self-referentially inconsistent: it is possible on his doctrine to prove that his doctrine is false. Finally, Jacobi’s doctrine licenses question-begging and is in principle unable to address or to settle disagreements among divergent intuitions.

Gauthier’s contractarianism begins with an idea of a rational deliberator but ‘finds no basis for postulating a moral need for the justification of one’s actions to others. The role of agreement is to address each person’s demand that the constraints of society be justified to him, not a concern that he justify himself to his fellows’ (Gauther 1997, 134–5). He contrasts his view with Scanlon’s contractualism, according to which agreement with others is the core of morality and each agent has the burden of justifying his or her actions to others. Both of their views count as ‘constructivist’ because they reject moral realism and hold that normativity is a function of what we do, either individually or collectively. Kant’s Rechtslehre is neutral regarding moral realism and yet constructivist about moral norms. However, the relevant acts basic to Gauthier’s and Scanlon’s views concern voluntary agreements we make. Using agreement to establish basic norms faces some serious difficulties. Kant’s Rechtslehre avoids these problems by showing how basic social norms can be identified and justified independently of voluntary agreement. Moreover, it does so in a way that shows that an individual’s justification of his or her acts to others and the justification of the acts of others to any individual are inseparable aspects of one and the same justificatory reasons in which voluntary agreement plays no role.

This paper extends my prior analysis of Hegel’s solution to the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion to moral philosophy. So doing provides a uniform account of rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains, i.e. empirical knowledge and morals. It argues that the Pyrrhonian Dilemma refutes both foundationalist and coherentist models of justification, and raises serious issues about the justificatory adequacy of contemporary forms of moral constructivism. It explicates and defends Kant’s account of the autonomy of reason as the self-critical regulation of one’s own thought and judgment in view of relevant principles, standards, evidence and alternative analyses. It argues that Kant’s account of autonomy is defensible independently of transcendental idealism and of natural causality. Due to our fallibility and incomplete knowledge and understanding, our individual critical self-assessment requires the constructive mutual criticism of others. Hence maximally rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains is in part, ineliminably, a social and historical phenomenon. These aspects of rational justification are consistent with, and ultimately support, realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and strict objectivity about basic moral principles. One’s own maximally rational justification of non-formal, substantive claims or views accordingly requires recognition of one’s justificatory dependence upon the constructive criticism of others. This requires recognizing their capacities for critical assessment and rational justification. This is the most fundamental form of mutual recognition in Hegel’s analysis. It provides direct and powerful justification for Kant’s thesis that we ought and must respect all others as autonomous rational agents, as agents who can think and act on the basis of justifying reasons. This justification is independent of Kant’s account of ‘dignity’ or the incommensurable value of rational agency.

In 1801 Hegel charged that, on Kant’s analysis, forces are ‘either purely ideal, in which case they are not forces, or else they are transcendent’. I argue that this objection, which Hegel did not spell out, reveals an important and fundamental line of internal criticism of Kant’s Critical philosophy. I show that Kant’s basic forces of attraction and repulsion, which constitute matter, are merely ideal because Kant’s arguments for them are circular and beg the question, and they have no determinate connection to any of the basic forces of Newtonian physics. Hence they are mere Gedankendinge. I argue further, that real physical forces transcend Kant’s analysis by showing that his proof of Newton’s law of inertia is unsound. I then show that this apparently specific disagreement underlies the enormous philosophical shift from Kant’s anti-naturalist transcendental idealism to Hegel’s naturalistic use of regressive, quasi-transcendental arguments.