Lucy Allais

This chapter presents a way of understanding Kant’s resolution of the free will problem that focusses on the difference between Kantian determinism and contemporary determinism. Many of the extant ways of understanding Kant’s solution attempt to find a way of showing that there being only one way the world in space and time could unfold (determinism) does not make the causality of freedom impossible. In contrast, the chapter argues that we can take Kant’s determinism seriously without thinking it follows from this that there is only one metaphysically possible way the world could unfold in space and time. It argues that while contemporary determinism is understood as the view that at any one moment there is only one possible future, this is not an implication Kantian determinism; the truth of Kantian determinism would not show more than one possible future to be impossible.

This chapter pursues Strawson’s project in “Freedom and Resentment” by exploring the connection between forgiveness and free will. It is argued that Strawson’s notion of reactive attitudes is helpful for understanding forgiveness and that thinking about forgiveness has implications for how to understand the kind of free will reactive attitudes see agents as having. In particular, it is argued that it is hard to make sense of the content of the reactive attitudes involved in forgiveness without something like an agent-causal view of freedom. Finally, it is suggested that Strawson’s strategy can better be defended if seen in the light of a Kantian compatibilism, rather than a Humean naturalist compatibilism.

This chapter proposes that part of the explanation for the divergent interpretations of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ is that a variety of seemingly very different readings are genuinely grounded in the text. In particular, it is argued that key notions in Strawson’s account can be understood in different ways, including: his appeal to ‘the facts as we know them’, his contrast between the ‘objective’ and ‘participant’ views, his notion of ‘quality of will’, and his claim that the responsibility practices revealed and expressed by our reactive responses are neither capable of nor in need of justification. The chapter argues that our initial interpretation of an idea leads us down a path which puts the next idea in a particular light, but where a different starting interpretation could have led to an alternative picture, equally coherent and compatible with the text. Finally, the chapter evaluates how Strawson’s argument is affected by the fact that he does not define determinism, saying that he does not know what the thesis of determinism is. It is argued that his argument is compatible with very different understandings of determinism, with implications for the nature of the resulting compatibilism.

My aim in this chapter is to characterize the change of heart that plays a role in forgiveness—in giving up warranted blaming reactive attitudes. I present this in the context of developing a Kantian account of what forgiveness is and why we need it, drawing on his moral psychology to characterize the relevant change of heart. I appeal in particular to Kant’s account of human frailty and its relation to his account of human evil. I argue that it is frail and flawed agents who lack an entirely fixed and stable character for whom forgiveness is a live option and a need. For such agents, there may be space to interpret us in the light of better willing than our wrongdoing indicates.

There are a number of reasons to think that one of Kant’s concerns in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ is with the active role the mind must play in organizing the sensory input to enable us to experience objects, and therefore that he thinks that something like what is now called perceptual binding is necessary for us to be presented with perceptual particulars. Given the centrality of the notion of synthesis in the _Critique_, as well as Kant’s claim that synthesis governed by the categories is needed for us to have what he calls ‘relation to an object’, it might be thought that Kant’s notion of synthesis is where we should look for Kant’s account of something like perceptual binding. The aim of this chapter is to argue that this is not the case, and that synthesis plays a much higher-level role in Kant’s account.

This paper compares Kant's transcendental idealism with three main groups of contemporary anti‐realism, associated with Wittgenstein, Putnam, and Dummett, respectively. The kind of anti‐realism associated with Wittgenstein has it that there is no deep sense in which our concepts are answerable to reality. Associated with Putnam is the rejection of four main ideas: theoryindependent reality, the idea of a uniquely true theory, a correspondence theory of truth, and bivalence. While there are superficial similarities between both views and Kant's, I find more significant differences. Dummettian anti‐realism, too, clearly differs from Kant's position: Kant believes in verification‐transcendent reality, and transcendental idealism is not a theory of meaning or truth. However, I argue that part of the Dummettian position is extremely useful for understanding part of Kant's position – his idealism about the appearances of things. I argue that Kant's idealism about appearances can be expressed as the rejection of experiencetranscendent reality with respect to appearances.

This paper argues that there is an important respect in which Rae Langton's recent interpretation of Kant is correct: Kant's claim that we cannot know things in themselves should be understood as the claim that we cannot know the intrinsic nature of things. However, I dispute Langton's account of intrinsic properties, and therefore her version of what this claim amounts to. Langton's distinction between intrinsic, causally inert properties and causal powers is problematic, both as an interpretation of Kant, and as an independent metaphysical position. I propose a different reading of the claim that we cannot know things intrinsically. I distinguish between two ways of knowing things: in terms of their effects on other things, and as they are apart from these. I argue that knowing things' powers is knowing things in terms of effects on other things, and therefore is not knowing them as they are in themselves, and that there are textual grounds for attributing this position to Kant.

I respond to Metz’s A Relational Moral Theory by raising some concerns with his account of ‘rightness as friendliness’ both as a moral theory and in relation to its supposed Africanness, as well as by suggesting some places where it could be clarified. I argue that his account of moral status as based on the capacity for friendship is more individualist than the accounts with which he compares it. Distinguishing between an account of what grounds value and an account of how we ought to act, I question whether a capacity-based ground of moral status can be equated with an account of rightness as friendliness. I argue further, that Metz builds values into his account of true friendliness, rather than showing that they are grounded in it. I then question the role of the sixteen intuitions he appeals to both in supporting his theory and in establishing its Africanness, and argue that it is based on simplified, homogenized and romanticized accounts of both Africa and the so-called west, as well as not treating like with like in the comparison.

In this introduction, we argue for a basic idea. Community-based spaces for promoting forgiveness and memory-making bear the promise of promoting some of the cultural transformations needed for thick, structural reconciliation. As we show by discussing some recent examples taken from the Colombian context of the past decade, these spaces do not compete, but actually complement a pragmatic, thin institutional design for reconciliation. This idea, as we discuss here, serves as the common thread connecting the articles in this special issue. The texts reflect on the practice of forgiveness and some of its specific contours in the context of the Colombian conflict.

Kant has a number of harsh-sounding things to say about beggars and giving to beggars. He describes begging as “closely akin to robbery”, and says that it exhibits self-contempt. In this paper I argue that on a particular interpretation of his political philosophy his critique of giving to beggars can be seen as part of a concern with social justice, and that his analysis makes sense of some troubling aspects of the phenomenology of being confronted with beggars. On Kant's view, without absolute poverty relief, the poor persons' external freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of those who have means. But the legitimacy of the state is based on ensuring that no one's basic freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of another. This means that in a legitimate state public structures must ensure that there is unconditional poverty relief. Having your basic needs met through private charity wrongs you. Kant's analysis is that when you encounter someone in a public space who asks you for money to meet their basic survival needs, you are being asked to solve a public problem in a private interaction, and there is no rightful way for you to do this.

This paper argues that one part of the picture of thinking about decolonising the philosophy curriculum should include problematising the notion of Western philosophy. I argue that there are many problems with the idea of Western philosophy, and with the idea that decolonising the curriculum should involve rejecting so-called Western philosophy. Doing this could include granting the West a false narrative about its origins, influences and interactions, perpetuating exclusions within contemporary and recent North American and European philosophy, perpetuating exclusions and failed acknowledgements within the history of so-called Western philosophy, while at the same time rejecting a tradition which has included in itself so many topics and methodologies that what is left after excluding it would leave other traditions with limited resources, at the same time as wrongly granting the West proprietary rights over any ideas it has happened to investigate, rather than seeing these as belonging to all of humanity. I therefore conclude that a central part of curriculum change should be problematising Western philosophy, including our learning more about, and teaching, more complex views of its history and interactions with other traditions.

After a long period of comparative neglect, in the last few decades growing numbers of philosophers have been paying attention to the startling contrast presented between Kant’s universal moral theory, with its inspiring enlightenment ideas of human autonomy, equality and dignity and Kant’s racism. Against Charles Mills, who argues that the way to make Kant consistent is by attributing to him a threshold notion of moral personhood, according to which some races do not qualify for consideration under the categorical imperative, I argue that Kant cannot be made consistent on race, and that rather than trying to make him so, we should use the example of Kant’s racism to tell us something about the nature of racism. I argue that Kant’s own moral philosophy and moral psychology in fact give some materials for thinking about his racism, and about racism.

In ‘Freedom and Resentment,' Strawson argues that we cannot separate holding people morally responsible for their actions from specific emotional responses, which he calls reactive attitudes, which we are disposed towards in response to people's actions. Strawson's view might pose problems for forgiveness, in which we choose to overcome reactive attitudes like resentment without altering the judgments that make them appropriate. I present a detailed analysis of reactive attitudes, which I use both to defend Strawson's account of the connection between these states and responsibility, and to show how we can fit forgiveness into this account. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (3) 2008: pp. 179-201.

In this paper I present a critique of some aspects of Thad Metz’s attempt to develop an African moral theory grounded on the value of ubuntu. I question the sense in which this theory is African, as well as his attempt to ground human rights on his single value theory of ubuntu. In a number of publications Thad Metz has given a clear, analytic account of what ubuntu is. Metz’s work on ubuntu does two things: 1) explains the content of ubuntu: what the value/virtue is; 2) presents a moral theory according to which appealing to ubuntu as a basic value enables us to explain what makes all actions right or wrong. He calls this an African moral theory. It is the second part I am skeptical about. He makes it plausible that ubuntu is an important value. And he shows how we can give it some clear content. However, I argue that he does not make plausible a single-value ethical theory based on ubuntu; it is not plausible as an ethical theory, and it is not plausible that such a theory is African in any significant sense.

ABSTRACT In this paper I respond to Fricker’s paradigm-based account of forgiveness, which aims to integrate two seemingly different versions of responses to wrongdoing—conditional forgiveness (what Fricker calls ‘Moral Justice Forgiveness’) and unconditional forgiveness (what Fricker calls ‘Gifted Forgiveness’)—into one explanatory order, as well as, she argues, showing the second to be derivative and parasitic on the basic functioning of the first, and more contingent. My aim is to endorse and draw on Fricker’s paradigm-based strategy and the way it enables us to present a unified account, to endorse her view that both gifted and conditional forgiveness are versions of one loosely unified phenomenon, but to argue for the reverse account of the order of conceptual priority. I will argue that gifted forgiveness is the paradigm, and that once we understand what it is and its role we can see why and how forgiveness also makes sense as something offered in response to a wrongdoer’s remorse, but that this latter form of forgiveness retains an aspect of being something essentially gifted.