Volume 104, Issue 3

Abstract: We are able to think of empirical objects as capable of existing unperceived. What explains our grasp of this conception of objects? In this paper I examine the claim that experience explains our understanding of objects as capable of existing unperceived with reference to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason . I argue that standard accounts of experience’s explanatory role are unsatisfactory, but that an alternative account can be extracted from the first Critique – one which relies on Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to discuss how the legal metaphors in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason can help us understand the work’s transcendental argumentation. I discuss Dieter Henrich’s claim that legal deductions form a methodological paradigm for all three Critiques that exempts the deductions from following a stringent logical structure. I also consider Rüdiger Bubner’s proposal that the legal metaphors show that the transcendental deduction is a rhetorical argument. On the basis of my own reading of the many different uses of legal analogies in the first Critique , I argue that they cannot form a consistent methodological paradigm as Henrich and Bubner claim.

Abstract: In Kant’s writings there is no worked out theory of values. Nonetheless,he has given some hints as to what such a Kantian theory of value might look like. I argue for the claim that his theory should be classified as a version of a fitting-attitude theory of value that is nowadays advocated by several philosophers. Values are, according to Kant, dependent on proper pro-attitudes (Kant’s term for pro-attitudes is Wohlgefallen ). In order for a pro-attitude to be apt, the pro-attitude must be explained by reasons that are grounded in properties the attitude is about. One problem for this view is the so-called “wrong kinds of reasons problem”. According to my view, this problem can be solved by delivering distinct definitions of aptness for first- and second-order pro-attitudes. I try to show that Kant has hinted at this solution for the “wrong kinds of reasons problem”.

Abstract: This article argues that Kant’s doctrine of radical evil and the doctrine of conversion which is its consequent reflect developments in Kant’s thinking about moral agency and his realization that his theory of freedom was inadequate to the problem of moral evil; that the changes Kant makes to accommodate evil result in a significant though subterranean shift in his concept of agency, resulting in two incompatible concepts, one explicit but inadequate, the other implicit yet necessary; and that the problems Kant encounters with radical evil and conversion and the concept of agency they push him towards provide an important link between Kant and German Idealism.

Abstract: Although Eckart Förster’s work contains many advanced scholarly accounts, it also has weaknesses. As Förster’s central attempt to make Goethe a Spinozan unfortunately ended in failure, we must recur to previous research (e.g. that of Albrecht Schöne). The same holds for several of the interpretations of Kant.