Volume 112, Issue 3

What does Kant claim to have shown in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy (RTA)? A recent publication by Bernd Ludwig shows the shortcomings of a fairly broad interpretative consensus around the claim that all that is at stake in the RTA is the mode of logical possibility. I argue that there is a lack of clarity as to what logical possibility, and that the real possibility of transcendental freedom (TF) is examined in much of the RTA. Ludwig’s own proposal that Kant shows the real possibility of TF however faces major problems. I formulate an alternative proposal that pays due attention to the claim of the antinomy’s thesis, the evolution of the argument of the RTA, and Kant’s later textual references to it. This also deals with the thorny issue of the relation between practical and TF.

Kant held that human beings are competitive and not very good at living together in harmony. He also held that the principle of one’s own happiness is the central opponent of the principle of morality. According to Allen Wood, these claims are related: the competitive tendencies Kant attributes to human nature reveal, according to Wood, that the very shape of our human idea of happiness is derived from a deep-seated arrogance, incompatible with morality. I argue, by contrast, that although Kant’s discussion of human nature reveals that human happiness is complicated by interpersonal comparisons and tensions, these are not immoral (or derived from immorality) and require no claims of innate human arrogance for their explanation. Consequently, these aspects of human nature are not themselves the reason that Kant considers our desire for happiness to be in conflict with our morality.

In his appendix to Soemmerring’s On the organ of the soul, Kant famously rejects the idea of a local presence or seat of the soul in the brain as fundamentally misguided. „By contrast, a virtual presence“ of the soul, considered as a conceptual construct, is said to make it possible to treat „the question regarding the sensorium commune as a merely physiological task“. Where Kant’s German original reads „möglich“, Arnulf Zweig in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant translates surprisingly as „impossible“. This cardinal error shall be communicated to readers who do not habitually consult the German original. Against this background, I illuminate the Kantian position (1) with in-depth material from Kant’s respective drafts and (2) in contrast to the syncretistic–materialistic approach of Johann Jacob Wilhelm Heinse.

This paper asks how ‚image‘ ( Bild ) and ‚imagination‘ ( Einbildungskraft ) relate to each other. The first part deals with important aspects such as ‚visuality‘, ‚reference‘, ‚order‘, ‚mediation‘ and ‚constructivity‘. The connection between ‚image‘ and ‚imagination‘ is then explored in texts on metaphysics and aesthetics by Christian Gottfried Bardili and Wilhelm Traugott Krug. With his ‚Law of Complementation‘, Bardili offers a solution to the problem of the mediation of the senses and the intellect. For Krug, ‚image‘ is a modality in which imagination in the field of art proceeds with the aim of creating order and unity in diversity.