Volume 98, Issue 4

In Hegel's Faith and Knowledge (Glauben und Wissen) he argues that Kant's critical system is unable to defend the assumptions that underlie its analysis of our cognitive faculties; Kant has begun his investigations by presupposing the distinction between our finite faculties, those “in which possibility and actuality are distinguished” (“in welcher Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit unterschieden werden”), and those of a being possessing an “intuitive understanding” (“intuitiven Verstand”), for whom cognition is not limited to the sensibly given. In so defining our cognitive faculties as finite Kant is able to distinguish our dependence not merely on the understanding as the locus of concepts, but so too on sensibility as the source of intuition. Cognition is thus limited to those thoughts that offer beyond their conceptual consistency the possibility of empirical givenness, and so define their actuality in terms of sensibility. And yet, it would seem, as Hegel argues, that

Two puzzles with regard to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (KrV) are incongruent counterparts and causality. In De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (MSI), Kant indicates that the experience of things like left and right hands, so-called incongruent counterparts, involve certain pure intuitions, and hence constitute one line of evidence for the claim that the concept of space itself is a pure intuition. In KrV, Kant again argues that the concept of space itself is a pure intuition, but does not cite the experience of incongruent counterparts as evidence for this claim. Since there is ostensibly nothing in KrV which tells against the existence of the experiences of incongruent counterparts, the natural question is: “Why, in KrV, does Kant not cite the experience of incongruent counterparts as evidence for the claim that the concept of space is a pure intuition?” The problem with causality is as follows. One of the most primary and basic claims of KrV is that empirical experience is structured by non-empirical concepts, such as substantiality and causality. In a portion of KrV entitled the Transcendental Deduction, Kant gives section 20 the heading “All sensible intuitions stand under the categories, as conditions under which alone their the manifold can come together in one consciousness”. Since categories are those concepts which structure empirical experience, section 20 has demonstrated that all sensible intuitions are subject to substantiality and causality. However, there is a later portion of KrV entitled the Second Analogy with the heading “Principle of temporal sequence according to the law of causality: All alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect”. Thus, the natural question is: “What does the Second Analogy demonstrate about causality which the Transcendental Deduction did not already demonstrate about causality?”

Zum Verständnis des Kantschen Rechtsbegriffs ist es notwendig, sich die Diskussionslage seiner intellektuellen Umgebung vor Augen zu führen, auf die nach längerer Ausarbeitung 1797 sein rechtsphilosophisches Hauptwerk Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre traf. Die Naturrechtsentwicklung des 18. Jahrhunderts hatte – zumindest in Deutschland – zur Herausbildung eines engeren, äußeren und auf äußeres Verhalten gerichteten sowie mit Zwang verbundenen, „strikten“ Naturrecht geführt, das besonders für das positive Recht bestimmend war. Diese Verengung auf ein striktes, äußeres, mit Zwang verbundenes Naturrecht war allgemein anerkannt und wurde als Fortschritt begrüßt. Man muß annehmen, daß sie Kant wohlvertraut war. Sie wird etwa in Baumgartens Initia Philosophiae Practicae und auch in Achenwalls Jus Naturae erläutert, zwei Schriften, nach denen Kant Vorlesungen gehalten hat. Er hat die entsprechende Passage in der letzteren Schrift auch kommentiert.

It is quite standard, even banal, to describe Kant's project in the Critique of Pure Reason [KrV] as a critical reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism, most directly expressed in Kant's claim that intuitions and concepts are two distinct, yet equally necessary, and necessarily interdependent sources of cognition. Similarly, though Kant rejects both the rationalist foundation of morality in the concept of perfection and that of the empiricists in feeling or in the moral sense, one might broadly characterize Kant's moral philosophy as an attempt to reconcile the apriori universality and necessity of rationalist ethics with empiricist (Humean) or sentimentalist (Rousseauean) strictures concerning the distinction between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’, between third personal knowledge of the good and first personal motivation.

Die Frage des Krieges müsse mit Ernst und nicht mit „blindem Ungefähr“ behandelt werden. Sonst werde

Zu den bedeutendsten Leistungen der Friedensschrift Kants für die Entwicklung der Völkerrechtsidee gehört die Zurückweisung der bisherigen Leitvorstellung eines ius ad bellum . Unmißverständlich formuliert er: „Bei dem Begriffe des Völkerrechts, als eines Rechts zum Kriege, läßt sich eigentlich gar nichts denken“ (ZeF, AA 08: 356). Eine internationale Rechtsordnung müsse dem Ziele dauerhafter Friedenssicherung dienen, und in einem Bund freier Völker soll dieser zwischenstaatliche Konsens institutionalisiert werden.