Luigi Filieri

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant provides two different propositions of freedom. According to the first, in the “Analytic of Pure Practical Reason,” freedom establishes the possibility of moral agency—i.e., it is the ratio essendi of the moral law. According to the second, in the “Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason,” freedom is the object of one of the practical postulates (CPrR 246–54; AA 5:132–41). Why should Kant postulate something that has been allegedly established as the ground of moral agency? Does Kant appeal to two different conceptions of freedom? In this paper, I argue that Kant (1) in both cases conceives of freedom as an unconditioned form of causality, and (2) pursues two different aims according to two different but complementary arguments. On the one hand (the practical standpoint), he wants to argue that the causality of freedom is actual, through moral agency, in the domain where the laws of nature also apply. On the other hand (the theoretical standpoint), he is aware that the possibility of achieving the highest good would be compromised if we did not assume, along with the other two postulates, a world in which only the causality of freedom applies. While freedom as the ratio essendi of the moral law is actual, freedom as a postulate is a mere object of belief.

In these comments, I share some remarks concerning two main points lying at the core of Gava’s book Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics: Gava’s reconstruction and account of a transcendental deduction, its relation to a metaphysical deduction, and more specifically his reading of the B-Deduction. I will discuss Gava’s arguments in order to highlight the key tenets of his interpretation and raise questions related to (1) the meaning and scope of the notion of ‘transcendental’; and (2) the commitment to – and the extent of – what we might call ‘cognitive constructivism’.

In The Architectonic of Reason Lea Ypi argues that Kant ultimately fails in his attempt at grounding the systematic unity of reason because of the lack of the practical domain of freedom in the first Critique. I aim to advance a more nuanced reading of Kant’s alleged failure by (1) distinguishing between the schematism of the ideas in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and the schematism of pure reason in the Architectonic. (2) I suggest that, while the practical domain of freedom is not established in the first Critique, the Canon and the Architectonic do account for its condition: the practical employment of reason and its unity with the theoretical. I point out that while (3) the schematism of the ideas accounts for the sole systematic arrangement of the understanding’s cognitions and the regulative role of the ideas and the ideal, in the Architectonic, (4) the schematism of pure reason instead bears more generally on systematicity as reason’s way of proceeding in framing its own unitary whole and the unity between its two lawful employments.

In the Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant claims that a highest being is the transcendental ideal of speculative reason. However, the Canon of the Doctrine of Method presents the highest good as an ideal of both the speculative and the practical use of reason. In this paper, I argue (1) that the highest good is the ideal of the unity of reason – unlike the ideal in the Dialectic – insofar as (2) the highest good serves both the speculative and the practical employment of reason. Accordingly, I also argue that (3) these two employments are complementary, not alternative. Kant’s argument for the ideal of the highest good in the Canon shows that the unity of reason combines the two lawful employments of reason. In order to be reason’s highest ideal, this ideal cannot just mirror the demands of speculative reason – it must also involve the other fundamental employment of reason, i. e., the practical. This highest standpoint cannot be merely speculative but must be moral as well: not just a highest ideal, but also a good (the highest good).

In this paper I argue that 1) Kant’s power of judgment is constitutively always reflecting, as its lawful employments involve a preliminary self-reference of the faculties the power of judgment itself is required to connect and let them match with each other. Accordingly, I claim that 2) the principle of purposiveness is the principle of the power of judgment as such, and not just of an allegedly self-standing reflecting branch of this faculty. I criticize the view that Kant draws a dichotomy between reflecting and determining judgments and argue that 3) Kant’s point in the third Critique is to rule out the amphiboly between the reflecting and the determining employment of the principle of purposiveness. The power of judgment is, as such, always reflecting: while in the case of cognition it also works in a determining way, in the case of both aesthetics and teleology it is only reflecting, i.e., self-purposive – as it sets its function as its own end.

In this paper, I discuss Kant’s concept-less schematism (KU, 5: 287) in the thirdCritique1and make three claims: 1) concept-less schematism is entirely consistent with the schematism in the firstCritique; 2) concept-less schematism is schematism with noempiricalconcept as an outcome; and 3) in accordance with 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold and leads to judgements of taste without this meaning either that the categories play no role at all or that these judgements are full-fledged cognitive determining judgements. While most commentators read the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, I argue that the freedom of the imagination is based on a non-determining employment of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without any complementary determination of the empirical concept.

This paper explores Beck’s theory of original representing in order to discuss both its historical and theoretical relevance and its implications concerning Kant’s views on the capacity to judge. My first concern will be to highlight the main points of Beck’s Kant interpretation and to show at which points he misunderstands Kant. My analysis also contains a positive aspect, for I adopt Beck’s claim that there is only one possible standpoint from which critical philosophy ought to be judged. Unlike Beck, I shall argue that this standpoint is that of Judgment’s normativity. I will consider the normative structure of Judgment from three perspectives: the proto-synthetic import of sensibility; the normative character of the pure concepts of the understanding; the lawfulness of the principles of the understanding. My basic idea is that only a normative account of Judgment can prove how and why all experience depends on the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. On Kant’s account, the capacity to judge applies transcendental rules to establish the laws which make our experience and knowledge both possible and legitimate. Every single object is an object of experience only insofar as it conforms to the normative structure of Judgment. For Kant, to constitute an object means to apply the rules which make something possible as an object of experience and cognition.

Scopo della presente ricerca è identificare all’interno della «Dialettica» della prima Critica i due tipi di necessità, naturale e funzionale, di cui sono portatori i concetti puri della ragione nonché di chiarire in che modo l’uno sia legato all’altro. Partendo da un chiarimento terminologico relativo alla parola idea si vuole rendere conto del significato del completamento della serie delle condizioni dell’intelletto da parte della ragione, tanto nei termini di una sistematizzazione dell’esperienza quanto nell’ottica di un rimando alla libertà come forma incondizionata di causalità nel regno della ragion pratica.

In this paper I discuss some relevant theses of Caranti?s Kant?s Political Legacy, whose aim is to provide a consistent account of how we could develop Kant?s political thought and see to what extent Kant?s insights can help us to critically understand the 21st century?s political world. First, I will focus on autonomy as the ground of dignity and discuss Caranti?s arguments against the exclusiveness of the Categorical Imperative as the sole principle of true moral agency. Second, I will take into account Caranti?s views on history and consider whether human rational nature can be regarded as containing teleological - though non-biological - elements, thereby questioning Caranti?s Separability Thesis. nema