-
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of Kant’s justification of the categorical imperative. The book contests the standard interpretation of Kant’s views by arguing that he never abandoned his view about this as expressed in his Groundwork. It is distinctive in the way in which it places Kant’s argument in the context of his transcendental philosophy as a whole, which is essential to understand it as an argument from within human agential self-understanding. The book reviews that existing…Read more
-
Nature, Ethics and Gender in German Romanticism and IdealismRowman & Littlefield International. 2018.
-
Contextualising FichteFichte-Studien 45 133-153. 2018.An examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte develops his ethical program in the Jena period and its immediate aftermath reveals the determining presence of Leibniz, and the complex heritage of Leibnizian perfectionist thought from which Kantian, and post-Kantian, ethics seek to extricate themselves. While Kant blocks any reversion to the older, Leibnizian perfectionism, his criticisms leave open a space for a new kind of perfectionist ethic, one whose object is the promotion not o…Read more
-
In Defense of ConscienceFichte-Studien 45 113-132. 2018.First in the Phenomenology and then in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel rejects Fichte’s notion of conscience on the grounds that it leads to despair. He also criticizes Fichtean conscience as purely “formal” and “abstract” and compatible with any content, which it can obtain only arbitrarily from the manifold of one’s natural drives and inclinations. For Hegel, there is an unresolvable tension between the claimed “universality” of a conscientious deed and the natural particularity…Read more
-
The Whole of Reason in Kant’s Critical PhilosophyDialogue 58 (2): 251-286. 2019.Kant often compares reason to an organized body, which suggests that reason should be understood as a whole from which all possible uses of the faculties of reason are derived. However, Kant does not elaborate his conception of the whole of reason. Nor does the secondary literature. This paper suggests that the wholeness of reason is the apodictic modality of reason, i.e., the necessary standard that determines what can systematically belong to reason, and thus works as the systematic condition …Read more
-
Respect for the Moral Law: the Emotional Side of ReasonPhilosophy 89 (1): 31-62. 2014.Respect, as Kant describes it, has a duality of nature that seems to embody a contradiction – i.e., it is both a moral motive and a feeling, where these are thought to be mutually exclusive. Most solutions involve eliminating one of the two natures, but unfortunately, this also destroys what is unique about respect. So instead, I question the non-cognitive theory of emotion giving rise to the contradiction. In its place, I develop the cognitive theory implicit in Kant's work, one in which emotio…Read more
-
Kant's Synthetic and Analytic Method in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Distinction between Philosophical and Mathematical SynthesesEuropean Journal of Philosophy 23 (3): 728-749. 2015.This article addresses Kant's distinction between a synthetic and an analytic method in philosophy. I will first consider how some commentators have accounted for Kant's distinction and analyze some passages in which Kant defined the analytic and the synthetic method. I will suggest that confusion about Kant's distinction arises because he uses it in at least two different senses. I will then identify a specific way in which Kant accounts for this distinction when he is differentiating between m…Read more
Toronto, ON, Canada
Areas of Specialization
3 more
19th Century Philosophy |
Yoga |
Samkhya |
Indian Ethics |
German Idealism |
Immanuel Kant |
Johann Gottlieb Fichte |
Indian Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Kant: Ethics |
Johann Gottlieb Fichte |