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293Transcendental Idealism as the Backdrop for Kant's Theory of ReligionIn Matthew C. Altman (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 144-164. 2014.In this invited book chapter I argue that, although the influence of Kant's transcendental idealism on the theories he puts forward in his book, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793/1794) may not be apparent at first sight, careful attention to their structure reveals a deep influence. Indeed, understanding Kant's arguments in this book as an application of his transcendental idealism is crucial to a proper understanding of their structure and force.
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245Kant’s Criticism of Swedenborg: Parapsychology and the Origin of the Copernican HypothesisIn Fiona Steinkamp (ed.), Parapsychology, Philosophy and the Mind: Essays Honoring John Beloff, Mcfarland. pp. 146-178. 2002.
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349Kant’s Critical Hermeneutic of PrayerJournal of Religion 77 (4): 584-604. 1997.This essay is a systematic exposition and partial defense of Kant's philosophy of prayer. "Does Kant even HAVE a philosophy of prayer?" you may ask. Read on...and you'll see.
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398What is Kantian Gesinnung? On the Priority of Volition over Metaphysics and Psychology in Kant’s ReligionKantian Review 22 (2): 235-264. 2015.Kant’s enigmatic term, “Gesinnung”, baffles many readers of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of Gesinnung, covering all 169 occurrences of cognate words in Religion, clarifies its role in his theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. Whereas the convention of translating “Gesinnung” as “disposition” reinforces a tendency to interpret key Kantian theories metaphysically, and Pluhar’s translation as “attitude”…Read more
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698Kant and Aristotle on Altruism and the Love Command: Is Universal Friendship PossibleAretè: International Journal of Philosophy, Human & Social Science 2 95-110. 2017.This article examines the plausibility of regarding altruism in terms of universal friendship. Section 1 frames the question around Aristotle’s ground-breaking philosophy of friendship. For Aristotle, most friendships exist for selfish reasons, motivated by a desire either for pleasure(playmates) or profit (workmates); relatively few friendships are genuine, being motivated by a desire for shared virtue (soulmates). In contrast to this negative answer to the main question, Section 2 examines a p…Read more
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364The Philosopher as a “Secret Agent” for Peace: Taking Seriously Kant’s Revival of the “Old Question”In Valerio Rohden, Ricardo R. Terra & Guido A. De Almeida (eds.), Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants, vol. 4 of Akten des X. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 597-608. 2008.This essay interprets the much-neglected Second Part of The Conflict of the Faculties, entitled “An old question raised again: Is the human race constantly progressing?”, by showing the close relationship between the themes it deals with and those Kant addresses in the Supplements and Appendices of Perpetual Peace. In both works, Kant portrays the philosopher as having the duty to promote a “secret article”, without which his vision of a lasting international peace through the agency of a federa…Read more
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317Kantian Theocracy as a Non-Political Path to the Politics of PeaceJian Dao 46 (July): 155-175. 2016.Kant is often regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern liberal democracy. His political theory reaches its climax in the ground-breaking work, Perpetual Peace (1795), which sets out the basic framework for a world federation of states united by a system of international law. What is less well known is that two years earlier, in his Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793/1794), Kant had postulated a very different, explicitly religious path to the politics of peace: he presents …Read more
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604Egalitarian Sexism: A Framework for Assessing Kant’s Evolutionary Theory of Marriage IEthics and Bioethics (in Central Europe) 1 (7). 2017.This first part of a two-part series exploring implications of the natural differences between the sexes for the cultural evolution of marriage assesses whether Kant should be condemned as a sexist due to his various offensive claims about women. Being antithetical to modern-day assumptions regarding the equality of the sexes, Kant’s views seem to contradict his own egalitarian ethics. A philosophical framework for making cross-cultural ethical assessments requires one to assess those in other c…Read more
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659Egalitarian Sexism: Kant’s Defense of Monogamy and its Implications for the Future Evolution of Marriage IIEthics and Bioethics (in Central Europe) 3 (7): 127-144. 2017.This second part of a two-part series exploring implications of the natural differences between the sexes for the cultural evolution of marriage considers how the institution of marriage might evolve, if Kant’s reasons for defending monogamy are extended and applied to a future culture. After summarizing the philosophical framework for making cross-cultural ethical assessments that was introduced in Part I and then explaining Kant’s portrayal of marriage as an antidote to the objectifying tenden…Read more
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427Kant's "Appropriation" of Lampe's GodHarvard Theological Review 85 (1): 85-108. 1992.It would be difficult to find a philosopher who has suffered more injustices at the hands of his commentators (friends and foes alike) than Immanuel Kant. This is particularly true when it comes to the many anecdotes that commentators are, for some reason, quite fond of reciting about Kant. The problem is that such tales are often used surreptitiously to twist Kant's own explicit claims about what he was attempting to accomplish, so that when his writings are read with these stories in mind, mis…Read more
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1274Kant’s Categories and Jung’s Types as Perspectival Maps To Stimulate Insight in a Counseling SessionInternational Journal of Philosophical Practice 3 (1): 1-27. 2005.After coining the term “philopsychy” to describe a “soul-loving” approach to philosophical practice, especially when it welcomes a creative synthesis of philosophy and psychology, this article identifies a system of geometrical figures (or “maps”) that can be used to stimulate reflection on various types of perspectival differences. The maps are part of the author’s previously established mapping methodology, known as the Geometry of Logic. As an illustration of how philosophy can influence the…Read more
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190Before I respond to the four essays that have each offered valuable feedback on my Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s ‘Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason‘ (hereafter CCKR), [1] a meta-critical question calls for an answer: Why was yet another commentary on Kant’s book, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (hereafter RGV), needed in 2015, [2] given the unprecedented fact that each of the three previous years had seen the publication of a commentary on the same book? The short answer i…Read more
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386Analytic Aposteriority and its Relevance to Twentieth Century PhilosophyStudia Humana 1. 2012.This article begins with an overview of the fourfold epistemological framework that arises out of Kant’s distinctions between analyticity and syntheticity and between apriority and aposteriority. I challenge Kant’s claim that the fourth classification, analytic aposteriority, is empty. In reviewing three articles written during the third quarter of the twentieth century that also defend analytic aposteriority, I identify promising insights suggested by Benardete (1958). I then present overvi…Read more
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10Book review of The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics (review)Journal of Scientific Exploration 26 928-930. 2012.This book announces a new academic discipline, the “cognitive science of mathematics” (p. XI), by demonstrating how an empirical examination of the ideas underlying our use of mathematical symbols and calculations must employ metaphors grounded in the “embodied mind.” The authors ruthlessly attack what they dub “The Romance of Mathematics” (p. XV), their metaphor for any approach that treats mathematics as grounded in an abstract, disembodied yet objective reality that mysteriously provide…Read more
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228The Waters of Love: A course of introductory lectures on love, sexuality, marriage, and friendshipPhilopsychy Press. 2003.Based on the author's lectures in Hong Kong, for classes on the philosophy of love, this book defends a theory of love as consisting of four types (two rational, two emotional) that tend to be experienced in three manifestations (sexuality, marriage, and friendship). Like a typical textbook, every chapter ends with a list of questions for further thought and a list of recommended further readings. The first of twelve chapters is shown here as an example.
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232Articles of Interest: A comment on "An Experimental Test of Non-Local Realism" (review)Journal of Scientific Exploration 21 649-650. 2007.
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338Is There A Logic of the Ineffable? Or, How Is it Possible to Talk About the Unsayable?In Nahum Brown & J. Aaron Simmons (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, Springer. pp. 71-80. 2017.This chapter defends a single, fixed, definite answer to the question: Is there a logic that governs the unsayable? The proposed answer is: “Yes, and no. Or yes-but-not-yes. And/or yes-no.” Each component of this answer is examined and used to generate three laws of what I call “synthetic logic”, which correspond directly to the laws of classical (Aristotelian) logic: the law of contradiction (“A=-A”), the law of non-identity (“A≠A”), and the law of the included middle (“-(Av-A)”). We can talk a…Read more
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275A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (I) Mathematics, Method and Pure IntuitionReview of Metaphysics 41 (1): 3-22. 1987.This article is mainly a critique of Philip Kitcher's book, The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge. Four weaknesses in Kitcher's objection to Kant arise out of Kitcher's failure to recognize the perspectival nature of Kant's position. A proper understanding of Kant's theory of mathematics requires awareness of the perspectival nuances implicit in Kant's theory of pure intuition.
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6Kant-Studies in the Hong Kong Philosophical ContextProceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 1 1257-1271. 1995.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |