Kenneth R. Westphal

This is one of the first volumes to appear in the projected fourteen-volume series, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, under the general editorship of Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. It is also the first translation ever into English of Kant's notorious late reflections on metaphysics and epistemology, dubbed "Opus postumum" by Kant's later editor, Erich Adickes. This is an excellent volume, in format, in content, and in physical presentation. Förster has provided a very clear, concise, and judicious introduction, which describes the history of Kant's manuscript, its composition, its place in Kant's philosophy, and the development of Kant's views and argument contained in it. The body of the text is a generous and representative selection of substantial excerpts from Kant's opus postumum, which fills volumes 21 and 22 of Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, totalling about twelve hundred pages of text. Förster has provided headings for seven sections of this material: "Early leaves and Oktaventwurf," "Toward the Elementary System of the Moving Forces of Matter," "The Ether Proofs," "How is Physics Possible? How is the Transition to Physics Possible?" "The Selbstsetzungslehre," "Practical Self-Positing and the Idea of God," and "What is Transcendental Philosophy?" The body of the text is preceded by a brief but useful bibliography and is followed by factual notes on the excerpted passages, a detailed glossary, a concordance to Ak vols. 21 and 22, and very good indexes of names and subjects. The editorial apparatus makes this volume especially useful, and the translators have certainly achieved their aim of making their translation read at least like Kant wherever it cannot quite read like English.

‘Universalist’ moral principles have fallen into disfavour because too often they have been pretexts for unilateral impositions upon others, whether domestically or internationally. Too widely neglected has been Kant’s specifically Critical re-analysis of the scope and character of rational justification in all non-formal domains, including the entirety of epistemology and moral philosophy, including both justice and ethics. Rational judgment is inherently normative because it is in part constituted by our self-assessment of whether the considerations we now integrate into a candidate judgment have been integrated as they ought, so as to form a cogent, justifiable judgment. Constitutive of this self-assessment is that rational judgments must be based upon considerations which can be communicated to all others, such that they too can assess them as sufficiently cogent justification; also constitutive of this rational self-assessment is that we actually engage with others who do assess our judgments. Kant’s Critical principles rule out in principle any unilateral imposition upon others, whether in cognition or morals. Using Kant’s Critical principles and methods in connection with ‘practical anthropology’ and the enormously important domain of acquired rights and obligations shows how Kant had already justified fundamentally universal principles of justice which can be institutionalised in variously distinctive cultures, and which form the proper bases for our acquired, specifically social rights and obligations, including those of friendship and community.

The full title and editorial information about this book must be taken at face value. This volume contains a brief Forward, a 20 page Introduction by Düsing, a 15 page summary by Troxler of Schelling’s 10 hours of introductory lectures on his philosophy of identity, a 19 page summary by Troxler of Schelling’s remarks clarifying his Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, a 14 page summary by Troxler of Hegel’s opening lectures on logic and metaphysics then broke off), 20 pages of notes by Düsing citing texts to which Schelling and Hegel refer or alude in these lectures, and 95 pages of interpretive exegesis by Düsing. Indices and a bibliography are also included. This is a handsome, scholarly edition of these materials.

This essay re-examines some key fundamentals of the Enlightenment regarding individual rights, responsibilities and republicanism which deserve and require re-emphasis today, insofar as they underscore the character and fundamental importance of mature judgment, and how developing and fostering mature judgment is a fundamental aim of education. These fundamentals have been clouded or eroded by various recent developments, including mis-guided educational policy and not a little scholarly bickering. Clarity about these fundamentals is more important today than ever. Sapere aude!

Does epistemology collapse for lack of resources other than logic, conceptual analysis and descriptions of one’s own apparent experiences, thoughts and beliefs? No, but understanding how and why not requires, Kant noted, a ‘changed method of thinking’. Some of these methodological changes are summarised in §2 in order to identify a philosophical role for thought experiments to help identify logically contingent, though cognitively fundamental capacities and circumstances necessary to human thought, experience and knowledge. As Kant also noted, experiments are only informative in response to posing the right question, indeed: the right kind of question. Accordingly, preparations for these epistemological thought experiments fill half of this chapter. The second half, examines three such thought experiments, variously developed by Kant, Hegel, C. I. Lewis, Austin, Wittgenstein and F. L. Will.

The scope of this study is both ambitious and modest. One of its ambitions is to reintegrate Hegel's theory of knowledge into main stream epist~ology. Hegel's views were formed in consideration of Classical Skepticism and Modern epistemology, and he frequently presupposes great familiarity with other views and the difficulties they face. Setting Hegel's discussion in the context of both traditional and contemporary epistemology is therefore necessary for correctly interpreting his issues, arguments, and views. Accordingly, this is an issues-oriented study. I analyze Hegel's problematic and method by placing them in the context of Sextus Empiricus, Descartes, Kant, Carnap, and William Alston. I discuss Carnap, rather than a Modern empiricist such as Locke or Hume, for several reasons. One is that Hegel himself refutes a fundamental presupposition of Modern empiricism, the doctrine of "knowledge by acquaintance," in the first chapter of the Phenomenology, a chapter that cannot be reconstructed within the bounds of this study.

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.

This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings in the late 1790s after his final system of Right was published. The material covers such topics as the central role of freedom, the social contract, the nature of sovereignty, the means for achieving international peace, property rights in relation to the very possibility of human agency, the general prohibition of rebellion, and Kant's philosophical defense of the French Revolution.

The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal principles contain two distinct grounds of obligation to obey political authority. One lies in his metaphysical principles of law, according to which there is only a duty to obey legitimate law or fully legitimate authorities. Another lies in his moral-pragmatic principles. He believes that membership in the state helps improve one’s character by counter-balancing one’s immoral inclinations. This is his ultimate ground for obedience to de facto, imperfectly legitimate states. On this ground, the duty to obey an actual state is conditional. Kant’s strong statements about the duty to obey actual states is explained by the ease with which he thinks the relevant condition is met by extant states. The apparent ambiguities in his discussion of obedience point to some important philosophical and historical shortcomings of his analysis of the division of govemmental powers and of judicial competence which hamper his analysis of the duty to obey the state.

This article summarizes the systematic importance of Hegel’s philosophy for pragmatism, and in particular for the contemporary revival of pragmatic realism. Key points lie in Hegel’s internal critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism, on the basis of which Hegel demonstrates that we can be self-conscious only if we are conscious of nature. This insight enables Hegel to develop genuinely transcendental proofs without invoking transcendental idealism. Hegel uses this result to defend realism about the molar objects of empirical knowledge against Pyrrhonian, Cartesian, and Humean scepticism. In this connection Hegel criticizes and rejects both coherentist and foundationalist theories of cognitive justification and argues for a pragmatic fallibilist theory of justification regarding empirical knowledge. Hegel argues (like Dewey) that individuals and social groups are mutually interdependent for their existence and characteristics; neither is more basic than the other.

The apparent implications of the latest findings of the life sciences for our freedom and autonomy are both exciting and controversial: They undermine a common view of human freedom: a fundamentally Cartesian view. A superior account of our freedom was developed by Kant and Hegel. Key features of Hegel's account show that we can expect from the life sciences further insights into the biological basis of our freedom and autonomy, but not their repudiation. I begin with basic features of Cartesian self-transparency (II) and then review three findings of contemporary life sciences (III). I then detail key features of Hegel's anti-Cartesianism (IV), in order to formulate the basic question about our freedom posed by the claim that biology explains away human freedom (V). I criticize this biological determinism by drawing upon Hegel's account of human freedom as autonomy (VI), and comment briefly on biologism in moral theory (VII).

The First World War was supposed to end all wars, though soon followed WWII. Since 1945 wars continued to abound; now we confront a real prospect of a third world war. Many armed struggles and wars arise in attempts to end repressive government; still more are fomented by repressive governments, few of which acknowledge their repressive character. It is historically and culturally naive to suppose that peace is normal, and war an aberration; war, preparations for war and threats of war belong to ‘normal’ human life. Our tolerance, acceptance or fostering of such repeated injustices and atrocities indicate pervasive failures to understand fundamentals of justice, and what we owe morally to ourselves and to all others, together with our responsibilities to preserve the biosphere, not merely our own store(s) of reserves. As matters both of justice and prudence we must re-orient ourselves, individually and collectively, to promote justice, peace and ecological responsibilities by identifying and instituting just forms of social cooperation, domestically and internationally. All of these are our problems, whether we recognize them or continue our pervasive negligence. We urgently require cogent understanding of the social dimensions of human judgment, rational assessment, right action, and public reason. This requires understanding (inter alia) how Kant’s explication of rational judgment and justification is fundamentally social, how these features of rational judgment and justification are constitutive of Kant’s account of individual autonomy, and how they are central to Kant’s account of proper public use of reason. Reasoning publically remains precarious, not because – as often alleged – the ‘Enlightenment project’ has failed. It has not failed, it has been thwarted, and in our public responsibilities we have too often failed it.