S04-509_14-10-07-14• Discussion agenda• 1. Reading selections: constellations.

– Reading: Mark Edmundson, “Against Readings”• 2. Groups: What makes you think you can do it alone? What kind of

discussion do you want?• 3. Kant: The issues. Kant or can’t: huge errors in the reception,

failures to connect the work to the history, difficulties in following Kant’s arguments.– Reading: Kuehn, biography. It’s a great narrative, as well as first rate

analysis– Items on the schedule: Ameriks, Pinkard, Wood, Guyer, Beiser (I know,

I know . . .)– Kant: Orientation, Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, two pieces by

Allen Wood, in reader, and the general introduction to the Practical Philosophy volume, under TEXTS on the website.

Basic considerations• Fundamental terms: see two page basic terms document on line.

(reproduced here, in chunks)• The history:• Multiple delays, while Kant thought. Sequences of issues not clearly

connected.• 1. Reflections on a Spirit Seer (Swedenborg) 1766• 2. Inaugural Dissertation, on Sensible & Intelligible (1770). • 3. Return to PLATO: evidence is all over, not direct, but obvious (if

you know Plato).• 4. The ‘silent decade’• 5. Middle age / maturity: First critique A, 1781; B 1787• In between, tons of stuff, with the most important the shift to

practical / moral philosophy as the actual objective of the critical project. Groundwork, 1786; 2nd Critique, 1787; 3rd Critique,

chronology• Chronological List of Kant's Works

(after Vleeschauwer & Klinke)• DateTitle1746 Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces • 1754 Investigation of the Question as to Whether the Rotation of the Earth on its Axis Has Undergone Any Modification. The Question as to Whether

the Earth is Growing Old, considered from the Angle of Physics. • 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge. A Brief Outline of

Some Meditations on Fire. • 1756 History and Natural Description of the Earthquake of 1755. Consideration of Recently Perceived Earth-tremors. Some Remarks towards

Elucidation of the Theory of the Winds. The Use of Metaphysics in Combination with Geometry in Natural Philosophy. • 1758 A New Doctrine of Rest and Motion and its Implications for Natural Science. A New Conception of Motion and Rest. • 1759 Reflections on Optimism. • 1762 The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures. • 763 An Attempt to Introduce Negative Quantities into Philosophy. The Only Possible Foundation for a Proof of the Existence of God. • 1764 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. An Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals.

Enquiry into Diseases of the Head. • 1765 Programme of Lectures for Winter Semester 1765-6. • 1766 Dreams of a Spiritseer Explained through the Dreams of Metaphysics. • 1768 On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space. • 1770 Inaugural Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World. • 1775 On the Various Races of Mankind. • 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. • 1783 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Which Shall Lay Claim to Being a Science. • 1784 Idea of a Universal History based on the Principle of World-Citizenship. Response to the Question: What is Enlightenment? • 1785 Concerning the Volcanoes on the Moon. On the Illegality of Book-pirating. Definition of the Concept of a Human Race. Fundamental Principles of

the Metaphysics of Morals. • 1786 Conjectures on the Beginnings of the History of the Human Race. Learning How to Think. Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.• 1787 Critique of Pure Reason (Second Edition). • 1788 Critique of Practical Reason. • 1790 Critique of Judgment. Concerning a Discovery by which any Fresh Critique of Pure Reason May be Rendered Superfluous by the Use of an Older

One. Concerning the Present Excess of Mystical Ecstasy and the Means of Remedying this Evil. • 1791 Concerning the Possibility of a Theodicy and the Failure of All Previous Philosophical Attempts in the Field. • 1792 On the Radical Evil in Human Nature in Religion. On the Proverbial Saying: "All is Very Well in Theory, but No Good in Practice.“• 1793 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. • 1794 Something Concerning the Moon's Influence on the Weather. The End of All Things. • 1795 Perpetual Peace. • 1797 Metaphysical Principles of Jurisprudence. Metaphysical Principles of Moral Philosophy. On a Supposed Philanthropic Justification for Lying. • 1798 The Conflict of the Faculties, together with a Treatise On the Power of the Mind to Master Morbid Feelings by Resolution Alone. Anthropology

from the Pragmatic Viewpoint.• 1799 Declaration concerning Fichte's Doctrine of Science.• 1800 Logic, a Handbook for Lectures (ed. Jäsche).• 1802 Physical Geography (ed. Rink).• 1803 Kant on Pedagogy (ed. Rink). • 1804What Real Progress Has Been Made by Metaphysics in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? Last Updated 13 August, 1997

Basic terms• FIRST CRITIQUE (Critique of Pure Reason; 2nd edition is standard, Kemp Smith used

here)• ESSENTIAL TERMS:• Transcendental (of logic): pure logic, without reliance on examples *GOOD• Transcendent: dialectic, attempt to claim knowledge beyond faculties *Very BAD• ANALYTIC: Terms or concepts that can be explicated by discerning what is already

contained in them. Example: a body is extended in space. This is analytic because to be a “body” means just to be extended in space.

• SYNTHETIC: Terms or concepts that can be acquired ONLY by adding something to what the understanding provides. Example: you cannot know that strychnine is a poison without seeing what happens when someone ingests it.

• EMPIRICAL: Dependent on experience• JUDGMENT: Basically, a predication. ‘This is a spoon’ is a judgment, as is ‘That is

black’• INTUITION: a perception. This has nothing weird or goofy or transcendent about it.• A PRIORI: Does NOT mean ‘comes before’: judgments or knowledge that is necessary,

universal, and incorrigible. • A POSTERIORI: Does mean ‘comes after’: judgments or knowledge that can only be

made after the fact. (e.g. x is a poison)• IDEAS of REASON: Only three: God, Immortality, and Freedom. Cannot be known

directly• ANTINOMIES: arguments constructed where the affirmative and negative are

equivalent, with nothing to decide between them. The Ideas of Reason can all be shown to lead to antinomies (argue the existence of God both ways, etc)

Terms, 2• 2nd Critique: Critique of Practical Reason• MORAL LAW: The recognition that there are principles that any rational being must recognize.• CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE: The result of universalizing a maxim that guides conduct: if it is contradictory, it

cannot • possibly be a moral law.• FREEDOM: The discovery, by reflection on a maxim, that Freedom (which cannot be known by understanding

alone) is real. This changes Kant’s view of the merit of examples. Generally, he distrusts them as the tools of casuistical thought (e.g. 5 men in a boat, but only provisions for 4: who gets dumped out?)

• AUTONOMY / HETERONOMY: A distinction between a person who actually does decide for herself/ and one whose

• Thought and behavior is determined by other forces and conditions.• ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------• These are characterization of judgments that we can make, describing the judgment itself (i.e. what kind of

judgment is it?), not the contents of any particular instance• Table of Judgments (Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, p. 107)• I• Quantity of Judgments• Universal• Particular• Singular • II III• Quality Relation• Affirmative Categorical• Negative Hypothetical• Infinite Disjunctive• IV• Modality• Problematic• Assertoric• Apodeictic

Terms, 3• ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------• Table of Categories: Kant: Critique of Pure Reason p. 113• TABLE OF CATEGORIES: A Priori Concepts of the Understanding : these are fundamental concepts that you think with. Without these, you would not be able to

formulate any thoughts about things.• I• Of Quantity• Unity• Plurality• Totality• II III• Of Quality Of Relation• Reality Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens)• Negation Of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect) • Limitation Of Community (reciprocity between agent and patient)• IV• Of Modality• Possibility -- Impossibility• Existence -- Non-existence • Necessity -- Contingency • CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES:• 1. The claim that we can know only appearances, not the “Thing-in-Itself” Ding an sich• 2. Specifically, that there is no faculty competent to guarantee knowledge of God—or whether the soul is immortal• 3. More generally, Kant’s thoroughgoing demonstration that we have no power of “Intellectual Intuition”: If we know it, it is by way either of empirical, bodily

intuition (sense experience), or by reasoning (big subject). • 4. While one may have reasons to desire knowledge of absolute spiritual or religious principles, they are not and cannot be compelling.• 5. Pure Reason has only a REGULATIVE, and not a CONSTITUTIVE function. In this respect, it is a Pure faculty, but one of DESIRE. It is not a faculty yielding

pure concepts.• 6. (A matter of long and sustained argument): the Critique of Pure Reason pertains only to STUFF, to THINGS. We can by transcendental use of reasoning

establish how it is we form concepts of stuff. But that does not make the transition to forming concepts of things that we cannot sense. (Goes back to a book on Swedenborg, 1766, and is reaffirmed repeatedly to his last work.) This puts him on the very long arc from Plato, through Duns Scotus, Bacon, and Hume, where the status of Forms, Ideas, Universals, or Laws remains at the knowable point of limitation for ordinary propositional logic.

• All of these gave his immediate heirs (especially Hegel) absolute fits. These were the only things worth knowing.• KANT’S “dualism”: The central issue here is that Kant distinguished sharply between appearance and reality, between empirical intuition and intellectual

intuition, and between the empirical and the cognitive. Fichte, Schelling, and above all Hegel, were convinced that this dualism was an error, a shortcoming, needing to be fixed.

• It is of interest that Coleridge, who early was inclined toward Fichte and Schelling, decisively rejected their position in his 1818 Essays on Method, which we will read.

• Peirce, a farther step along, gets almost entirely free of this quagmire with his conception of logic. First major thinker who has a fully developed theory of mediation. His Semiotics is fundamentally incompatible with Saussure’s “Semiology”.