Larissa Wallner

We provide a reconstruction of Kant's empirical-pragmatic account of science, focusing on psychological, social, and historical conditions that ‘pragmatically’ promote or hinder the advancement of science. Our novel reconstruction offers a realistic portrayal of Kant's view. Part 1 claims that he presents a differentiated and dynamic account of research. Part 2 looks at psychological conditions, beginning with Kant's analysis of cognitive faculties (2.1), and the distinction between higher and lower faculties (2.2). Then, we turn to layers of scientific cognition: (2.3) observation, (2.4) imagination, (2.5) ‘methodical meditation’, and (2.6) ‘sagacity’, the talent for scientific discovery. Part 3 addresses biological, political, and historical conditions that hinder the development of science: mortality, lack of liberty, and ‘barbarism’. We explain how Kant conceptualizes science as a collective historical process promoting human flourishing (3.1). To cope with individual limits, Kant demands to divide scientific labour between (3.2) kinds of minds and (3.3) disciplines. Section (3.4) treats his views on truth and testimony as crucial for science. In our conclusion, part 4, we show how Kant thinks the history of science ought to be studied, how his pragmatic approach relates to his claims about reason's role in scientific progress, and what research questions emerge next.

The special issue deals with the connection between exemplarity and imagination in the context of human action and judgment, which has received little scholarly attention so far. The aim is to shed light on this aspect within practical philosophy and thereby to deepen existing debates. The contributions highlight both the theoretical potential and the challenges involved in dealing with examples – within philosophical reflection as well as in everyday contexts. The practical references range from the importance of personal role models to the role of literature and social media to questions of technological and ecological transformation. Although the contributions take different theoretical and methodological approaches, what they all have in common is an interest in which examples can be considered exemplary against the backdrop of specific social and historical contexts and to what extent our imagination has a limiting or enabling effect in this regard.

On the basis of Kant’s reflections on aesthetic judgement, we show why literature can be a special source of knowledge: Literature does not mediate discursively, but exemplarily. Because of its sensible-intellectual character, it encourages taking other standpoints and can initiate action. This not only harbours potential, but also perils. Yet, according to our exegetical thesis, Kant only recognises some of these, especially because he fails to consider the socio-political context of writing and reading. At the same time, Kant’s position on exemplarity offers resources for further systematic thinking. Using these resources, we will argue that narrative literature bears the force to empower its recipients: it makes the invisible visible by disclosing new perspectives on what is and what could be. With regard to the former, it can evoke in its readers a deeper understanding of their own identity, their social location and its limitations, and act as a hermeneutic model. With regard to the latter, literary works are examples of imagination. They can provoke reflection on the possibility of shifting these boundaries towards other concepts of life and society. This is particularly true of works that express experiences, which are marginalised or considered taboo. However, literary works can also normalize existing social conditions by depicting them, as these very conditions define what is considered imaginable and what remains unspoken within the dominant interpretive framework. Literature can thus also contribute to the concealment of existing power relations and block the reader’s sense of what is possible by encouraging him or her to internalise prevailing social norms. Consequently, narrative literature must not only be diverse in order to be empowering, it must also be received in a certain way: not passively consumed and mentally reproduced, but in the mode of critical self-reflection and emulation.

This article explores an overlooked motif in the Critique of Pure Reason: the Damsel in Distress. Kant uses the trope to motivate his first Critique on a narrative level. Reason is depicted as a high-born female subject in a hopeless predicament, unable to free herself. A hero rescues her, not by liberation, but by discipline, mirroring the myth where the rescued female is appropriated through marriage. The paper examines the parallels between this popular trope and the narrative of the first Critique, arguing that Kant’s choice of this motif is due to cultural and political biases. While this narrative aligns with Kant’s goal of establishing philosophy as a strict science, it marginalizes the also present, progressive potential of Kant’s concept of the highest faculty as a hermeneutical, world-making, and orienting capacity as means for universal cum critical thinking. The discussion proceeds from (1) argumentatively relevant methodological considerations, to showing that Kant (2) does use the damsel in distress in the Critique of Pure Reason. Subsequently, (3) with regard to the reasons for the choice of the narrative, it is argued that it is based on the convictions about the nature of women that Kant advocates in the Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime and in his Anthropology. (4) Insofar as narratives and metaphors shape convictions and delineate the realm of the conceivable, Kant’s narrative choice undermines his own conception of reason, according to which the highest faculty is to be understood positively as an active, hermeneutic and orienting ability as well as a selfreflective basis for critical thinking. The discussion ends (5) with a conclusion.

Larissa Wallner’s contribution starts from practical, aesthetic, and theoretical problems to trace a critical path that connects with the problem of conceptualism covered in the first part through the shared caveat that intuitions must not be ignored. She applies this presupposition to explore what she considers to be two under-researched sections of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, those on the faculty of premonition and sagacity, identifying a kind of intuitive imagination in these two sections that she regards as crucial for philosophical enquiry.

The study explores how Kant's critical philosophy enables us to develop new ideas and find original, exemplary aesthetic forms. Theoretical productivity is a subjective process of change over time that affects beliefs and the way they are held to be true. On the one hand, Kant's intellectual production is determined by universal cognitive capacities, on the other hand it is informed by empirical, historical experience. The development of innovative thought and original aesthetic forms is based on an intertwining of productive imagining, productive self-thinking and orienting design. With Kant, theoretical productivity can be understood as both determinable and open-ended intellectual activity. Both cases necessarily presuppose theoretical freedom.