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1Kant: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2011.This volume collects Kant's most important ethical and anthropological writings from the 1760s, before he developed his critical philosophy. The materials presented here range from the Observations, one of Kant's most elegantly written and immediately popular texts, to the accompanying Remarks which Kant wrote in his personal copy of the Observations and which are translated here in their entirety for the first time. This edition also includes little-known essays as well as personal notes and fr…Read more
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19Character in Kant’s Moral Psychology: Responding to the Situationist ChallengeArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 101 (4): 508-534. 2019.In recent years, several philosophers have used “situationist” findings in social psychology to criticize character-based ethical theories. After showing how these criticisms apply, prima facie, to Kant’s moral theory, I lay out a Kantian response to them. Kant admits the empirical reality of situation-dependence in human actions but articulates a conception of “ought implies can” that vindicates his character-based moral theory in the face of rarity of character. Moreover, he provides an interp…Read more
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Affects and passionsIn Alix Cohen (ed.), Kant's Lectures on Anthropology: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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29What is the Idea of the Soul? Comments on Katharina Kraus, Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self_- _FormationKantian Review 27 (3): 475-481. 2022.These remarks focus on Kraus’s claim that for Kant the category of substance cannot apply to the soul but that instead we can and should apply a merely regulative idea of the soul. While granting Kraus’s contention that we require an idea of the soul in order to investigate inner experience, I argue that the category of substance nonetheless applies to the soul, but that the notion of the soul as entirely non-corporeal is a regulative idea. To explore this contention, I closely examine two cruci…Read more
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53Discipline and the cultivation of autonomy in Immanuel Kant and Maria MontessoriJournal of Philosophy of Education 55 (6): 1097-1111. 2021.Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.
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22Situationism and intellectual virtue: a Montessori perspectiveSynthese 198 (5): 4123-4144. 2019.In recent years, philosophers and psychologists have criticized character- or virtue-based normative theories on the basis that human behavior and cognition depend more on situation than on traits of character. This set of criticisms, which initially aimed at broadly Aristotelian virtue theories in ethics, has expanded to target a wide range of approaches in both ethics and, recently, epistemology. In this essay, I draw on the works of Maria Montessori to defend her conception of character and p…Read more
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57The Moral Philosophy of Maria MontessoriJournal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2): 133-154. 2021.This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of…Read more
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19Constructing Authorities: Reason, Politics, and Interpretation in Kant’s Philosophy, written by Onora O’NeillJournal of Moral Philosophy 16 (4): 509-512. 2019.
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48Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform, by Laura PapishMind 128 (512): 1344-1355. 2019.Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform, by PapishLaura. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xvii + 257.
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Critical Guide to Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.
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24Towards a research program in Kantian positive psychologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 71 89-98. 2018.
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46Maria Montessori's metaphysics of lifeEuropean Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 991-1011. 2018.This paper elucidates the core principles of Maria Montessori's metaphysics. Her attention to embryological, evolutionary, and educational development led to her teleological metaphysics of life. Individual organisms are governed by internally driven, perfectionist, discontinuous teleology. And this individual teleology is integrated into a holistic, ecological context whereby individuals' striving towards perfection works for the increased ordered complexity of the systems of which they are par…Read more
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35Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900 by Frederick C. BeiserJournal of the History of Philosophy 56 (1): 180-181. 2018.Frederick Beiser continues to unfold the German philosophical tradition, refusing to let a static and narrowly construed canon of "big names" obscure important philosophical debates in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. Weltschmerz focuses on the pessimism controversy, the debate over "the thesis that life is not worth living, that nothingness is better than being, or that it is worse to be than not be".The most important philosopher in the book is Arthur Schopenhauer. Chapters 1–4 are …Read more
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43Corruption, Non‐ideal Theory, and Grace: A Response to Kant and the Ethics of HumilityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3): 624-631. 2007.
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39In 1773, Kant cancelled a course in theoretical physics – due to lack of enrollment – and taught “Anthropology” in its place. From that time, Kant taught Anthropology every winter semester until he retired in 1796. The anthropology course was one of two courses in “Weltkenntnis” that Kant taught every year. The other, physical geography, was taught in the Summer semester. When he retired, Kant compiled the notes from his anthropology lecture course into Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsich…Read more
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49What is the Human Being?Routledge. 2013.Philosophers, anthropologists and biologists have long puzzled over the question of human nature. It is also a question that Kant thought about deeply and returned to in many of his writings. In this lucid and wide-ranging introduction to Kant’s philosophy of human nature - which is essential for understanding his thought as a whole - Patrick R. Frierson assesses Kant’s theories and examines his critics. He begins by explaining how Kant articulates three ways of addressing the question ‘what is …Read more
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16Review: McCarty, Richard, Kant's Theory of Action (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (6). 2010.
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105Maria Montessori’s Philosophy of Experimental PsychologyHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 5 (2): 240-268. 2015.Through philosophical analysis of Montessori’s critiques of psychology, I aim to show the enduring relevance of those critiques. Maria Montessori sees experimental psychology as fundamental to philosophy and pedagogy, but she objects to the experimental psychology of her day in four ways: as disconnected from practice, as myopic, as based excessively on methods from physical sciences, and—most fundamentally—as offering detailed examinations of human beings (particularly children) under abnormal …Read more
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126Kant's empirical account of human actionPhilosophers' Imprint 5 1-34. 2005.In the first Critique, Kant says, “[A]ll the actions of a human being are determined in accord with the order of nature,” adding that “if we could investigate all the appearances . . . there would be no human action we could not predict with certainty.” Most Kantian treatments of human action discuss action from a practical perspective, according to which human beings are transcendentally free, and thus do not sufficiently lay out this Kant’s empirical, causal description of human action. Drawin…Read more
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32A wealthy eccentric bought a house in a neighborhood I know.  The house was surrounded by a beautiful display of grass, plants, and flowers, and it was shaded by a huge old avocado tree. But the grass required cutting, the flowers needed tending, and the man wanted more sun. So he cut the whole lot down and covered the yard with asphalt. After all it was his property and he was not fond of plants. (Hill 1983: 98).
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133Character and evil in Kant's moral anthropologyJournal of the History of Philosophy 44 (4): 623-634. 2006.In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains that moral anthropology studies the “subjective conditions in human nature that help or hinder [people] in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals” and insists that such anthropology “cannot be dispensed with” (6:217).1 But it is often difficult to find clear evidence of this sort of anthropology in Kant’s own works. in this paper, i discuss Kant’s account of character as an example of Kantian moral anthropology.
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87Two Standpoints and the Problem of Moral AnthropologyIn Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb & James Krueger (eds.), Kant's Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality, De Gruyter. pp. 83. 2010.
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Rational Faith: God, Immortality, GraceIn Immanuel Kant: Key Concepts, Acumen Publishing. 2011.This article offers an explanation and analysis of Kant’s philosophy of religion. It starts with Kant’s criticisms of the ontological, cosmological, and physico-teleological arguments for the existence of God from the ’Critique of Pure Reason’. It then explains Kant’s moral arguments in the ’Critique of Practical Reason’ for the existence and nature of God and for humans’ personal immorality. Finally, it lays out the argument for the necessity of grace from Kant’s ’Religion within the Boundaries…Read more
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101Learning to love: From egoism to generosity in DescartesJournal of the History of Philosophy 40 (3): 313-338. 2002.Patrick Frierson - Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 313-338 Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes Patrick R. Frierson The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals. Descartes…Read more
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Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral PhilosophyPhilosophical Quarterly 55 (220): 516-519. 2005.
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109Adam Smith and the possibility of sympathy with naturePacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (4). 2006.As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's "all important emotion of sympathy" (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in "History of Astronomy and Physics," I show that sym…Read more
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24Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (2): 292-294. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 292-294 [Access article in PDF] Secada, Jorge. Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 333. Cloth, $59.95. Descartes scholars can welcome this book. Secada supports trends in scholarship that criticize seeing Descartes as merely an anti-skeptical foundationalist, and he challenges many prominent interpret…Read more
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38Symbolic Representation in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (review)Faith and Philosophy 23 (2): 232-238. 2006.
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102Making Room for Children's Autonomy: Maria Montessori's Case for Seeing Children's Incapacity for Autonomy as an External FailingJournal of Philosophy of Education 50 (3): 332-350. 2016.This article draws on Martha Nussbaum's distinction between basic, internal, and external capacities to better specify possible locations for children's ‘incapacity’ for autonomy. I then examine Maria Montessori's work on what she calls ‘normalization’, which involves a release of children's capacities for autonomy and self-governance made possible by being provided with the right kind of environment. Using Montessori, I argue that, in contrast to many ordinary and philosophical assumptions, chi…Read more