Kant's Early Critics on Freedom of the Will

Kant's Early Critics on Freedom of the Will PDF

Author:

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-03-31

Total Pages: 638

ISBN-13: 1108600123

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This book offers translations of early critical reactions to Kant's account of free will. Spanning the years 1784-1800, the translations make available, for the first time in English, works by little-known thinkers including Pistorius, Ulrich, Heydenreich, Creuzer and others, as well as familiar figures including Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling. Together they are a testimony to the intense debates surrounding the reception of Kant's account of free will in the 1780s and 1790s, and throw into relief the controversies concerning the coherence of Kant's concept of transcendental freedom, the possibility of reconciling freedom with determinism, the relation between free will and moral imputation, and other arguments central to Kant's view. The volume also includes a helpful introduction, a glossary of key terms and biographical details of the critics, and will provide a valuable foundation for further research on free will in post-Kantian philosophy.

Kant's Conception of Freedom

Kant's Conception of Freedom PDF

Author: Henry E. Allison

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-01-16

Total Pages: 557

ISBN-13: 1107145112

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Traces the development of Kant's views on free will from earlier writings through the three Critiques and beyond.

Force and Freedom

Force and Freedom PDF

Author: Arthur Ripstein

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0674054512

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In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant’s thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant’s political philosophy. Ripstein shows that Kant’s thought is organized around two central claims: first, that legal institutions are not simply responses to human limitations or circumstances; indeed the requirements of justice can be articulated without recourse to views about human inclinations and vulnerabilities. Second, Kant argues for a distinctive moral principle, which restricts the legitimate use of force to the creation of a system of equal freedom. Ripstein’s description of the unity and philosophical plausibility of this dimension of Kant’s thought will be a revelation to political and legal scholars. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant’s ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant’s views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today. Ripstein defends the idea of equal freedom by examining several substantive areas of law—private rights, constitutional law, police powers, and punishment—and by demonstrating the compelling advantages of the Kantian framework over competing approaches.

Kant on Freedom

Kant on Freedom PDF

Author: Owen Ware

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-06-08

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 1009083813

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Kant's early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will's activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will's activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation of Kant's theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the causal law of a free will, and that the supposed ability of free will to choose indifferently between options is an empty concept. Freedom, for Kant, is a power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one's own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not thereby rendered impossible, but it also does not express a genuine ability.

Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity

Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity PDF

Author: Kate A. Moran

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-09-27

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1107125936

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A collection of essays on the foundational themes of freedom and spontaneity in Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

Kant's Critique of Spinoza

Kant's Critique of Spinoza PDF

Author: Omri Boehm

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0199354804

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Contemporary philosophers frequently assume that Kant never seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism-certainly not before the break of Der Pantheismusstreit, or within the Critique of Pure Reason. Offering an alternative reading of key pre-critical texts and to some of the Critique's most central chapters, Omri Boehm challenges this common assumption. He argues that Kant not only is committed to Spinozism in early essays such as The One Possible Basis and New Elucidation, but also takes up Spinozist metaphysics as Transcendental Realism's most consistent form in the Critique of Pure Reason. The success -- or failure -- of Kant's critical projects must be evaluated in this light. Boehm here examines The Antinomies alongside Spinoza's Substance Monism and his theory of freedom. Similarly, he analyzes the refutation of the Ontological Argument in parallel with Spinoza's Causa-sui. More generally, Boehm places the Critique of Pure Reason's separation of Thought from Being and Is from Ought in dialogue with the Ethics' collapse of Being, Is and Ought into Thought.

The Subject of Freedom

The Subject of Freedom PDF

Author: Gabriela Basterra

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0823265161

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Is freedom our most essential belonging, the intimate source of self-mastery, an inalienable right? Or is it something foreign, an other that constitutes subjectivity, a challenge to our notion of autonomy? To Basterra, the subjectivity we call free embodies a relationship with an irreducible otherness that at once exceeds it and animates its core. Tracing Kant’s concept of freedom from the Critique of Pure Reason to his practical works, Basterra elaborates his most revolutionary insights by setting them in dialogue with Levinas’s Otherwise than Being. Levinas’s text, she argues, offers a deep critique of Kant that follows the impulse of his thinking to its most promising consequences. The complex concepts of freedom, autonomy, and subjectivity that emerge from this dialogue have the potential to energize today’s ethical and political thinking.

Critique of Practical Reason

Critique of Practical Reason PDF

Author: Immanuel Kant

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-06-11

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 0486113027

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This 1788 work, based on belief in the immortality of the soul, established Kant as a vindicator of the truth of Christianity. It offers the most complete statement of his theory of free will.

The Virtues of Freedom

The Virtues of Freedom PDF

Author: Paul Guyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0191072265

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The essays collected in this volume by Paul Guyer, one of the world's foremost Kant scholars, explore Kant's attempt to develop a morality grounded on the intrinsic and unconditional value of the human freedom to set our own ends. When regulated by the principle that the freedom of all is equally valuable, the freedom to set our own ends — what Kant calls "humanity" - becomes what he calls autonomy. These essays explore Kant's strategies for establishing the premise that freedom is the inner worth of the world or the essential end of humankind, as he says, and for deriving the specific duties that fundamental principle of morality generates in the empirical circumstances of human existence. The Virtues of Freedom further investigates Kant's attempts to prove that we are always free to live up to this moral ideal, that is, that we have free will no matter what, as well as his more successful explorations of the ways in which our natural tendencies to be moral — dispositions to the feeling of respect and more specific feelings such as love and self-esteem — can and must be cultivated and educated. Guyer finally examines the various models of human community that Kant develops from his premise that our associations must be based on the value of freedom for all. The contrasts but also similarities of Kant's moral philosophy to that of David Hume but many of his other predecessors and contemporaries, such as Stoics and Epicureans, Pufendorf and Wolff, Hutcheson, Kames, and Smith, are also explored.