-
7Imperatives and the Causality of Freedom in Kant’s “Antinomy of Pure Reason”In Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 1031-1038. 2018.
-
71Kant on the Moral Law as the Causal Law for FreedomKant Studien 113 (1): 40-83. 2022.For Kant, the moral law is the causal law of freedom. However, it is not an explanatory causal law. It is instead a causal law of imputation: it is a law according to which we can be held responsible for the actions the law declares necessary; that is, it is a law according to which we can be considered the causes of whether or not we act lawfully. In this way, the moral law makes possible a kind of causality that is a “third thing” between natural necessity and blind chance. This essay traces t…Read more
-
623Edward Kanterian, Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn, London and New York: Routledge, 2018 Pp. xvii + 444 ISBN 9781138908581 (hbk) £110.00 (review)Kantian Review 25 (3): 497-504. 2020.This is a chronological commentary on Kant’s writings through 1769 whose aim is to reveal that the ‘secret thorn’ driving Kant’s thought through its twists and turns is the scripture-based faith of the German Protestant tradition.
-
1105Leibniz on Human Finitude, Progress, and Eternal Recurrence: The Argument of the ‘Apokatastasis’ Essay Drafts and Related TextsOxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 8 225-270. 2018.The ancient doctrine of the eternal return of the same embodies a thoroughgoing rejection of the hope that the future world will be better than the present. For this reason, it might seem surprising that Leibniz constructs an argument for a version of the doctrine. He concludes in one text that in the far distant future he himself ‘would be living in a city called Hannover located on the Leine river, occupied with the history of Brunswick, and writing letters to the same friends with the same me…Read more
-
126Imperatives and the Causality of Freedom in Kant's Antinomy of Pure ReasonIn Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 1031-1038. 2018.
-
266An English translation of Leibniz's fragment "Horizon rerum humanarum... " in which he announces a plan to demonstrate "that the number of truths or falsehoods enunciable by humans as they are now is limited; and also that if the present condition of humanity persisted long enough, it would happen that the greatest part of what they would communicate in words, whether by talking or writing, would have to coincide with what others have already communicated in the past; and moreover that new human…Read more
-
228Autonomy as Second Nature: On McDowell's Aristotelian NaturalismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 51 (6): 563-580. 2008.The concept of second nature plays a central role in McDowell's project of reconciling thought's external constraint with its spontaneity or autonomy: our conceptual capacities are natural in the sense that they are fully integrated into the natural world, but they are a second nature to us since they are not reducible to elements that are intelligible apart from those conceptual capacities. Rather than offering a theory of second nature and an account of how we acquire one, McDowell suggests th…Read more
-
471Learning and the Necessity of Non-Conceptual Content in Sellars's Empiricism and the Philosophy of MindIn Michael P. Wolf & Mark Norris Lance (eds.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars, Rodopi. pp. 115-145. 2006.For Sellars, the possibility of empirical knowledge presupposes the existence of "sense impressions" in the perceiver, i.e., non-conceptual states of perceptual consciousness. But this role for sense impressions does not implicate Sellars' account in the Myth of the Given: sense impressions do not stand in a justificatory relation to instances of perceptual knowledge; their existence is rather a condition for the possibility of the acquisition of empirical concepts. Sellars suggests that learnin…Read more
-
214Principled and Unprincipled MaximsKant Studien 103 (3): 318-336. 2012.Kant frequently speaks as if all voluntary actions arise from our maxims as the subjective principles of our practical reason. But, as Michael Albrecht has pointed out, Kant also occasionally speaks as if it is only the rare person of “character” who acts according to principles or maxims. I argue that Kant’s seemingly contradictory claims on this front result from the fact that there are two fundamentally different ways that maxims of action can figure in the deliberation of the agent: an agent…Read more
-
670Appetimus sub ratione boni: Kant’s Practical Principles between Crusius and LeibnizIn Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 323-334. 2013.
-
71Review of Ermanno Bencivenga, Ethics Vindicated: Kant's Transcendental Legitimation of Moral Discourse (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (6). 2007.
-
862One of Leibniz’s more unusual philosophical projects is his presentation (in a series of unpublished drafts) of an argument for the conclusion that a time will necessarily come when “nothing would happen that had not happened before." Leibniz’s presentations of the argument for such a cyclical cosmology are all too brief, and his discussion of its implications is obscure. Moreover, the conclusion itself seems to be at odds with the main thrust of Leibniz’s own metaphysics. Despite this, we can d…Read more
-
1000Free Will and the Freedom of the Sage in Leibniz and the StoicsHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (3): 203-219. 2008.
-
1519Kant on Moral Freedom and Moral SlaveryKantian Review 17 (1): 1-32. 2012.Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other people to work …Read more
-
167Second nature and spirit: Hegel on the role of habit in the appearance of perceptual consciousnessSouthern Journal of Philosophy 48 (4): 325-352. 2010.Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains a …Read more
-
2383An English translation of a draft essay by Leibniz from 1715, in which Leibniz argues for the conclusion: "if humanity endured long enough in its current state, a time would arrive when the same life of individuals would return, bit by bit, through the very same circumstances. I myself, for example, would be living in a city called Hannover located on the Leine river, occupied with the history of Brunswick, and writing letters to the same friends with the same meaning."
-
1571Kant’s Moderate Cynicism and the Harmony between Virtue and Worldly HappinessJournal of the History of Philosophy 54 (1): 75-109. 2016.For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be one from which we ca…Read more
-
2000Leibniz and the Stoics: Fate, Freedom, and ProvidenceIn John Sellars (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, Routledge. pp. 226-242. 2016.
Paradise, Nevada, United States of America