Volume 105, Issue 1

Abstract: In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant famously characterizes space as a unity, understood as an essentially singular whole. He further develops his account of the unity of space in the B-Deduction, where he relates the unity of space to the original synthetic unity of apperception, and draws an infamous distinction between form of intuition and formal intuition. Kant’s cryptic remarks in this part of the Critique have given rise to two widespread and diametrically opposed readings, which I call the Synthesis and Brute Given Readings. I argue for an entirely new reading, which I call the Part-Whole Reading, in part by considering the development of Kant’s views on the unity of space from his earliest works up through crucial reflections written during the silent decade.

Abstract: Kant identifies knowledge [ Wissen ], belief [ Glaube ], and opinion [ Meinung ] as our three primary modes of “holding-to-be-true” [ Fürwahrhalten ]. He also identifies opinion as making up the greatest part of our cognition. After a preliminary sketch of Kant’s system of propositional attitudes, this paper will explore what he says about the norms governing opinion and empirical hypotheses. The final section will turn to what, in the Critique of Pure Reason and elsewhere, Kant refers to as “General Applied Logic”. It concerns the “contingent conditions of the subject, which can hinder or promote” good inquiry; and, though rarely mentioned in the secondary literature, it offers Kant’s methodological alternative to the traditional epistemological goal of finding “a sufficient and yet at the same time general criterion of truth”.

Abstract: In this article I argue that Kant’s conception of the good will in its relation to the gifts of nature and fortune listed in the opening paragraphs of Groundwork I is usually misunderstood. The misunderstanding has its roots in the attribution of the alleged predicate ‘good in a conditioned sense’ to those gifts, even when they are taken in isolation. As a result, the centrality and primacy of Kant’s concept of the good will as the condition of the goodness of those gifts is completely obscured. However, a different picture emerges if one takes into account that ‘good in a conditioned sense’ properly means ‘good only on the condition of being combined with a good will’, so that talking of the goodness of such gifts taken in isolation or apart from the good will is a logical contradiction. Accordingly, we will see that, in his practical philosophy, Kant assigns to the good will a role very similar to the role played by Aristotle’s concept of substance in his theoretical philosophy. For, according to Kant, those gifts can be good and be said to be good only on the condition of being in a will which is good. Finally, we will see how this interpretation of the primacy of the good will sheds light on Kant’s view on the moral worth of actions.

Abstract: In a paper (recently published in the Kant-Studien ) Omri Boehm claims that Kant argues for a “Spinozist substance monism” in his pre-critical writing Über den einzigen Beweisgrund vom Dasein Gottes (as an adequate understanding of God) and that he conserves this principle, henceforth as a regulative one, in the shape of the transcendental ideal in the first Critique . I try to reply on the basis of the following considerations: first, Kant is at least literally rejecting the idea of God as the one and only substance in the Beweisgrund , apparently by regarding as correct a different understanding of “substance” than that had by Spinoza. Second, the transcendental ideal also has a non- or even anti-Spinozist character in three regards, which can be deduced with the support of several restrictive and regulative claims of transcendental theology and physicotheology, which are still accepted by the critical Kant: it is designed as an extramundane principle; it is identified as a global ground of a consequence ; and it is conceived as a potential, non-excludable source of purposive structures in the world .

Abstract: This contribution portrays the Kantian philosopher Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, who for no obvious reason fell into almost total oblivion shortly after his early death. While Heydenreich did not develop his own philosophical system comparable to the representatives of German Idealism, he nevertheless played an invaluable role in communicating, disseminating and applying the philosophy of Kant. Examining specific characteristics of Heydenreich’s numerous philosophical writings, the author looks at (1) their communicative qualities, (2) their richness of content and certainty of method, and (3) the concept of a “philosophy of life”, as developed by Heydenreich. The author also looks at, but does not attempt to explain, the obvious question why a writer and academic so unusually successful and well-known during his own lifetime, praised even to the point of eulogy as a philosophical genius, should be so rapidly forgotten after his death, and why this situation has remained unchanged up to the present day.