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Prof. Dr. Markus Kohl (UNC Chapel Hill)
Original Synthesis, Normativity, and Intellectual Freedom
This talk examines the character of the synthesis of empirical intuitions which brings them to the "original" synthetic unity of apperception, and which "precedes a priori all my determinate thinking". Some prominent readings view this synthesis as an intellectually blind, unconscious mental process. Against such readings, I argue that Kant conceives it as a reflective, norm-governed activity which expresses the cognitive agent's transcendental freedom.
https://philosophy.unc.edu/people/markus-kohl/
Dr. Larissa Berger (Siegen)
Heautonomy and Originality in Judging Beauty
My talk will focus on the a priori principle of reflective judgment (PRJ), how it relates to heautonomy, and what role it plays in judging beauty. I will argue that, in the free play, PRJ is crucial to manifest a purposive unity of nature outside and inside of us, something which goes beyond what is empirically given to us and is therefore novel. The talk will proceed in four steps:
1) I will explore the content of PRJ. In its most general form, PRJ concerns the “purposiveness for our faculty of cognition” (CJ: 184). I argue that PRJ comprises two aspects: the objective aspect says that the forms of nature outside us exhibit a certain regularity so that the reflective power of judgment is able to find concepts (rules) for them. The subjective aspect says that in its activity of apprehending forms the imagination functions purposively for the understanding’s business of finding concepts. The content of PRJ is to be detached from its status as a merely regulative principle: we do not determine anything by it, but in pursuing natural science we treat nature as if it were purposive.
2) I will turn to Kant’s thesis that PRJ stems from an act of heautonomy (see CJ: 185; FI: 225). Literally, “heautonomy” means self-self-legislation. This cannot mean that the subject is both the legislator and the addressee of the law, since the same holds true for the moral law which stems from autonomy, not heautonomy. As seen above the content of PRJ refers to nature. Yet, PRJ does not prescribe anything to nature, but merely to the subject herself. There is a gap between the reference point of PRJ’s content and its addressee. This, of course, points back to its status as a regulative and heuristic principle. But then, how can PRJ lead to original thoughts?
3) To answer this question, I will focus on PRJ’s role in judging beauty. I argue that, in addition to its function as a guiding thread for natural science, PRJ has a second function. Kant says that the “apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflecting power of judgment, even if unintentionally, at least comparing them to its faculty for relating intuitions to concepts” (CJ: 190). I take this to mean that, whenever the subject engages in an activity of reflection, an automatic and unconscious comparison alongside PRJ takes place. The understanding compares the forms apprehended by the imagination with their suitability for being conceptualized (objective aspect of PRJ); this also implies a comparison of whether the activity of the imagination is purposive for the understanding (subjective part). In the free play, the understanding carries out this comparison alongside PRJ, with the ongoing result that both the various forms and the activity of the imagination are purposive for its business of finding concepts. This ongoing positive result furthers the activity of free synthesis carried out by the imagination. Notice that already the free synthesis of the imagination exceeds mere receptivity. Moreover, the free play comprises a manifestation of the unity of nature outside and inside us which is freely produced by the subject itself.
4) I will turn to this manifestation of PRJ. The mental state called ‘free play of the faculties’ also exhibits what Kant calls proportion for cognition in general, that is, a purposive unification of imagination and understanding. Since this is nothing but the subjective aspect of PRJ, the free play comprises a manifestation of the latter. Furthermore, the purposive unification of the faculties takes place on the occasion of certain natural forms. Thus, there is also a manifestation of PRJ’s objective aspect. The purposive unification or harmony of nature outside and inside us is nothing that is simply be empirically given to us. Rather, it is something we freely create in the process of the free play of the faculties. And, in feeling pleasure in the beautiful we even become aware of it.
https://www.uni-siegen.de/phil/philosophie/mitarbeiter/berger_larissa/
Dr. Christian Onof (London)
The Freedom and Originality of Rational Thought
I argue that Kant’s understanding of freedom of the will provides us with the grounds for conceiving of ourselves as capable of novel and original thought. I endorse Markus Kohl’s understanding of freedom of thought as ‘reflective control’ but take it as implying it is a species of freedom of the will understood broadly. The focus of this paper will however be upon how this doxastic agency allows for originality in thought.
First, I draw some support for the claim that thought is a practical activity in inner sense from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GMS III). It follows that freedom of thought is a particular facet of transcendental freedom whose possibility is addressed in the resolution of the third antinomy. There, Kant shows the compatibility of psychological determinism with the real possibility of a causality of freedom. The solution Kant proposes, is to have the law of the agent’s causality of inner sense (empirical character) grounded in the law of the causality of freedom (intelligible character). While this ‘altered-law’ interpretation (see Scholten, Ertl) allows us to see how an agent’s thought might be original insofar as its source is this agent’s causality of freedom, it seemingly leaves no room for originality of thought in the sense of leeway in time, i.e. novelty with respect to past mental states, since the empirical character qua law of nature (of inner sense) is unchanging.
Kant however makes an important distinction between pre-determination (predictability in principle) and causal determination of action in a Reflexion famously analysed by Heimsoeth. While this, applied to the case of thought, would seem to provide the conceptual space for originality of thought, it is seemingly incompatible with the strong claim of psychological determinism in the resolution of the third antinomy.
Some therefore dismiss such unpublished material as confused. I argue that it reflects an essential feature of Kant’s theory of free will (see Vilhauer), i.e. the libertarian requirement of leeway in time, as can be seen from its role in the example of the malicious lie in the resolution of the third antinomy. So the question is: how can one reconcile this with Kant’s psychological determinism?
I do not propose to loosen the force of this determinism by a weak interpretation of the Second Analogy (e.g. Allison) or to question it by arguing that the Second Analogy does not apply to inner sense (e.g. Friedman). Rather, the solution lies, I argue, in understanding the nature of the causality of inner sense. To do so, I first examine Kant’s claims about psychology in the Preface of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. There Kant shows why the ‘empirical doctrine of the soul’, i.e. psychology, cannot be a science or even a ‘systematic art’. While there is a wide consensus that this has to do with its not being mathematisable, the importance of the one-dimensionality of time has been overlooked. I show in what way this feature accounts for why no such science is possible and further, for why the determination of the objects of inner sense requires an individual subject’s contribution.
I therefore interpret Kohl’s notion of ‘reflective control’ as involving taking epistemologically relevant contents of inner sense (e.g. beliefs) as determining a new content of inner sense, namely a representation corresponding to a new thought (a judgement). This determination is causal, according to psychological causality, but the subject’s rationality has contributed to determining this causality through a cognitive act.
Does this interpretation not require altering an unchanging empirical character? I shall show that this is not the case because of the essential novelty, at any time, of the contents of inner sense. It follows that there is always a need for further creation here, i.e. the empirical character, while unchanging, is progressively manifested in time.
Dr. Neşe Aksoy (Sofia)
Kant's highest good: A synthesis of noumenal freedom and the freedom of pursuing happiness
Despite its strictly noumenal and non-empirical character, Kantian ethics never omits the possibility of noumenal freedom, which goes hand in hand with the freedom to strive for the satisfaction of one's empirical desires and ends (or happiness). The necessary synthesis between noumenal freedom and the freedom to pursue happiness is ultimately found in Kant's idea of the highest good (summum bonum). As an ideal moral state that encompasses the synthesis of virtue (or moral perfection) and happiness, the highest good is seen as the ultimate goal of morality in which moral agents can achieve happiness in proportion to their virtue. On closer examination, Kant suggests that the highest good embodies the final state of moral freedom, since it is based on the idea that rational agents strive for their moral perfection (or virtue), which leads to the realisation of their ultimate potential of noumenal freedom. However, as already indicated, the highest good consists not only of noumenal freedom, but is also associated with happiness. Kant assumes that the pursuit of moral perfection (or virtue) presupposes happiness because happiness is morally good if it is earned or deserved. Thus, happiness as a natural or empirical goal of practical reason is not excluded from the scope of morality, but integrated into it as a necessary by-product of virtue. Simply put, noumenal freedom based on virtue does not exclude the possibility of freedom to strive for the realisation of one's own empirical goals and desires: Virtue leads to happiness.
What does this conception of the highest good as a synthesis between noumenal freedom and the freedom to strive for happiness say about the possibility of a new and original way of thinking and willing in Kantian ethics? At this point, it is appropriate to recall one of the basic ideas of the Kantian conception of the highest good, which states that the highest good is an
"unconditional object" of practical reason that can never be fully grasped by human powers.
However, it requires endless striving to promote it. In this respect, the highest good denotes the moral state that is unconditionally supreme and complete. However, as Kant says, this supreme and perfect goal must not only be pursued rationally, but also realised practically in the sensible world. Therefore, Kant argues that the highest good is a duty that must be promoted in the world to the highest possible degree. On this basis, the ideal of the highest good amounts to the ultimate moral duty that commands transcendental subjects to realise their noumenal freedom in coordination with the satisfaction of their empirical demands and desires. The highest good, then, opens up the possibility of seeing the noumenal realm of freedom in close connection with the empirical realm of happiness, and suggests that this synthesis is fundamentally based on the novel and original way of thinking and willing of a transcendental subject that structures a dialectical and necessary relationship between the two.
In short, this conference paper will argue that the highest good, according to Kant, is an unconditional ideal of practical reason that transcendental subjects dutifully pursue in order to coordinate their noumenal freedom with the freedom to pursue their empirical needs and desires. The highest good thus places transcendental subjects in a state in which they are actively engaged in the new and original mode of thinking and willing, ceaselessly striving to realise their ultimate freedom by crossing its noumenal and empirical ramifications. The main purpose of this essay, then, is to refute the notion that Kantian noumenal freedom excludes any ground for the freedom of empirical thought by showing that the highest good embodies the ultimate state of morality, which includes the freedom to pursue happiness as part of noumenal freedom.
Dr. Charlotte Baumann (Berlin)
Novel Concepts and Epistemic Friction
Drawing inspiration from Hermann Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience(1885), I will argue that not only empirical concepts, but also the categories and concepts like time, law-likeness, and universality need revision, specification, and additions. As against what later thinkers like Michael Friedman argue, however, these changes can and ought to be motivated by the mind-independent world. The mind-independent world is the world behind our concepts, the world as it would be if all sense-making beings had died out. Kant is right to say that only the senses interact with this world and that smells, sounds, and tastes cannot tell us whether our categories and empirical concepts capture something about a world beyond our conceptualization. However, it is defensible to assume that the mind-independent world has some regularities of its own that our concepts may fail to, but could possibly come to approximate. If we make this hypothesis, we can suggest that science ought to constantly check its fundamental concepts. Surprises, failed experiments, false predictions, and unintended consequences ought to be interpreted as ‘epistemic friction’, i.e., a theory’s failure to capture regularities of the mind-independent world. Metaphorically speaking, the task of science is to discover what the regularities of the world are by bumping into it in ways that our theories can either account for or not, and then improving our theories to better account for how the world bumps us back. Those bumps do not mechanically cause us to think differently. Rather, they suggest flaws in our theories and hence the need to change our categories and empirical concepts, and there with our assumptions about the world.
Konstanty Kuzma (Munich)
Originality, Spontaneity and Freedom: Kant on the Activity of Rational Minds
According to Kant, human cognition has two stems, which Kant introduces by contrasting the origin of their contents. While sensibility is that faculty through which objects are given to us, the understanding allows us to think objects through operations of our rationality. The fact that our understanding is thus spontaneous has aroused the suspicion that Kant may be overemphasizing the extent to which we are free in our thinking. Thus John McDowell believes Kant is wrong in conceiving of the unity bestowed on objects by our understanding as a spontaneous act. Is not the way that we cognize objects through intuitions determined by the world and thus oblivious to our whim?
While it is indeed the case that Kant tends to associate spontaneity with freedom, as readily seen in his conception of “absolute spontaneity”, the spontaneity of a presentation does not as such imply its being an expression of our freedom. In fact, there is an important sense in which we are unfree both in the way that we bring unity to intuitions, and in which we make judgments about the world. Yet both the categories and judgments are spontaneous in the sense that they originate in the activities of our mind and are thus neither derived from experience nor given to us. Thus McDowell was right in claiming that Kant locates spontaneity in the realm of our cognition, and by extension, nature (as the totality of all objects of experience), but wrong to suggest that this would bestow a dangerous degree of choice on us when it comes to the question of how we experience the world.
Sean Greenberg and Marcus Willaschek have argued that locating spontaneity within the realm of nature would bring about another problem. According to them, situating spontaneity in the realm of nature will make away with the lawfulness of nature. If spontaneity is allowed to enter into nature, they argue, there will be no way to account for Kant’s solution to the Third Antinomy. In closing, I will argue that spontaneity in the sense in which I introduced it does not represent a threat to either the lawfulness of nature or Kant’s solution to the Third Antinomy.
My paper consists of four parts. In the first part, I present the supposed problematic introduced by John McDowell as to the unrestricted freedom of our understanding as it relates to the world. In the second section, I give a brief contextualization of Kant’s use of “spontaneity” both historically and within his Critical turn. In the third section, I situate Kant’s concept of “spontaneity” between originality and freedom. In the fourth and final section, I address the issue of the lawfulness of nature and the Third Antinomy and show why my proposed interpretation can deal with both.
Dr. Mathis Koschel (University of Southern California)
Kant’s Direct Argument against Predeterminism
Predeterminism is the view that “human actions as occurrences have their determining grounds in the preceding time”. (AA VI:49fn) If predeterminism is true, then human actions are exclusively determined through what precedes them in time. Arguably, this excludes human freedom. For, human freedom is plausibly taken to involve a determination of one’s will that does not lie exclusively in a preceding temporal state. If predeterminism is true, then it is plausible to say “I could not have acted differently” about any given action that seems to be one’s own. Equally, human actions that are typically considered to contain novelty—such as creative acts in the arts or the creation of new concepts in science—would be ruled out if predeterminism is true.
Contrary to common views such as Wood 1984,[1] I hold that Kant argues against predeterminism and that he argues against it not by simply wheeling in the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. Rather, Kant argues directly against predeterminism by showing that it is impossible for a preceding time to contain the exclusive determining grounds of an event, and a fortiori of a human action.
Kant shows this—in the Third Antinomy of Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason—by pointing out that natural causation is incapable of providing a sufficient cause or reason for a given event. This connects to predeterminism in the following way. Kant has argued—in the Second Analogy of Experience—that we can conceive of an event as objectiveonly if we take it to follow with necessity from a preceding cause. And the objectivity of an event essentially involves its having an objective position in time. In this way, Kant gives a transcendental justification both of the concept of “causation” as well as of the concept of “preceding time”.[2] The reference to a preceding time in Kant’s definition of predeterminism is hence plausibly taken to involve natural causation: an event is connected with its preceding time through natural causation. Furthermore, the predeterminist’s contention that a human action has its determining grounds exclusively in the preceding time can be paraphrased as the contention that the sufficient cause or reason of a human action lies in the preceding time. This point, taken together with the previous one, can be paraphrased thus: predeterminism involves the claim that natural causation could be the only kind of causation there is.
Now, the decisive step in Kant’s argument of the Third Antinomy, I hold, consists in his pointing out the following. Natural causation is such that a cause is itself objective and thus objectively in time. Hence, a natural cause is itself an effect of another natural cause. Yet, a kind of causation where a cause is itself an effect of yet another cause cannot live up to the demands that come with the claim that this kind of causation provides a sufficient cause and thus could be the only kind of causation there is. For, the demand to supply a sufficient cause creates a regress when applied to such a kind of causation: a cause that in turn has its cause never supplies a sufficient explanation for why an event happened, because it is itself to be explained by its cause. The demand to supply a sufficient cause (and thus explanation) eternally gets kicked down the road to the cause of the cause, the cause of the cause of the cause, and so on. No sufficient cause is ever supplied by such a kind of causation. Rather, causal chains are essentially “open ended”.
Therefore, the claim entailed by predeterminism cannot be upheld that natural causation could be the only kind of causation there is.
[1] “Kant’s Compatibilism”
[2] Contra Watkins 2004 (Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality), the paradigmatic case of causation is one where the cause constitutively involves an event: natural causation. Yet, Watkins brings out that, for Kant, not all causation is of this paradigmatic kind.
M.a. Lucia Volonté (Mainz)
Transcendental Freedom and Spontaneity of Thinking in the Pre-Critical Kant
In this paper, I address the relationship between the concepts of transcendental freedom and spontaneity of thinking by tracing its development in Kant’s Silent Decade.
Some passages from the critical works suggest a relationship between the concept of transcendental freedom and thespontaneity of thinking. However, the reason for this connection is not clear. Besides defining in the first Critique theunderstanding, reason, and transcendental freedom as spontaneous (A 50-51/B 74-75, B 129-130, A 448/B 476, A533/B 561), Kant also deduces the possibility of freedom from the spontaneity manifested by the theoretical faculties, e.g., in Section III of the Groundwork (GMS, AA 4: 452) and his review of Schulz’s Attempt (RezSchulz, AA 8: 14).
In Kant scholarship, the possibility of a connection, even an analogy, between practical and theoretical spontaneity has often been discussed – e.g., by Allison (1990; 1996), Ameriks (1991), Pippin (1987), Prauss (1981), and Willaschek(2009) –, however without examining the origins of this connection in Kant’s thought. On the other side, scholars such as Kawamura (1996) and Dyck (2016) have respectively analyzed the pre-critical concepts of transcendental freedom and the spontaneity of the understanding, but they do not consider their relationship.
To shed light on this issue, I propose to trace the path that leads Kant to relate the concepts of transcendental freedomand the spontaneity of thinking during the Silent Decade, especially in the Notes and Lectures on Metaphysics. Theiranalysis shows that Kant's pre-critical conception of the soul is the ground for the connection between the two concepts. Referring back to the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition, Kant conceives of the soul as a spontaneous being, because it represents the sole source of its acts of volition and thought. Consequently, the concepts of transcendental freedom and theoretical spontaneity refer to the same capacity of the soul to determine itself from an inner principle (cf. V-Met-L1/Pölitz, AA 28: 285). As I will show, Kant accounts for the freedom of the will and the spontaneity of theunderstanding in a way that goes beyond mere analogy and does not fail to recognize their specific differences.
To illustrate this thesis, I first address the early Kantian conception of freedom in terms of practical-transcendentalfreedom. In his early notes on freedom, Kant denotes by "spontaneity" the capacity of the will to determine its actionson the basis of inner and intelligible, i.e., non-
sensible, laws (Section 1). Since fundamental to Kant's account of transcendental freedom is the claim that the subject is the source of spontaneous action (cf. R 4226, AA 17: 466), I focus on the pre-critical concept of soul. Especially the characterization of the soul in the Pölitz Lectures on Metaphysics shows that, like transcendental freedom, the spontaneity of thinking originates in the subject and is immediately present in self-consciousness (Section 2). Finally, Iinvestigate the meaning of spontaneity of thinking with regard to the synthetic activity of the understanding. Although Kant initially discusses spontaneity only from a practical- metaphysical perspective, beginning in the mid-1770s, in relation to the question of the objective validity of human cognition, he also begins to consider spontaneity as able toexplain the synthetic activity of the understanding: to arise spontaneously, acts of cognition must have their source in the understanding itself and rest on inner a priori rules (Section 3).
Dr. Sabrina Bauer (Luxembourg)
Kants kritischer Begriff endlicher Spontaneität in der Critik der reinen Vernunft
Gemäß Kants Analyse des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens ist dieses als Zusammenwirken eines rezeptiven Vermögens (Sinnlichkeit) und eines spontanen Vermögens (Verstand im weiten Sinn) zu begreifen. Um den Begriff endlicher Spontaneität, wie er in Kants Erkenntnistheorie von zentraler Bedeutung ist, zu entwickeln, ist zu beachten, dass der Begriff der Spontaneität eines endlichen Erkenntnisvermögens grundsätzlich aus dem Gegensatz zum Begriff der Rezeptivität zu verstehen ist. Rezeptivitätbedeutet generell die Empfänglichkeit einer Entität. Nach traditionellem Verständnis ist sie der Grund für die Endlichkeit des Menschen im Erkennen. Der Gegenbegriff zur Rezeptivität ist Spontaneität. Dieser Begriff ist gekennzeichnet durch das generelle Merkmal des ‚Von-selbst-stattfindens‘. Das bedeutet: Spontane Vorstellungen sind nicht „von außen“ (dem Gegenstand) verursachte Vorstellungen, sondern spontan erzeugte Vorstellungen. Wenn es für ein endliches Erkenntnissubjekt reine spontane Vorstellungen gibt, dann stellt sich die Frage, ob sich verständlich machen lässt, dass sie objektiv gelten, bzw. ob sie überhaupt objektiv gelten.
In der vorkritischen Zeit setzt Kant, im Einklang mit dem Rationalismus, der rezeptiven Sinnlichkeit eine in sich undifferenzierte Spontaneität der Intelligenz oder Rationalität entgegen (vgl. 2:392, § 3). Nach De Forma § 4 stellt die Sinnlichkeit die Dinge vor, wie sie subjektiv erscheinen, der Verstand hingegen, wie sie objektiv sind (vgl. 2:392). Die von Hume vorgebrachte Kritik des objektiven Geltungsanspruches der Kausalität (vgl. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London 1748) section IV und VII) erweckten Kant nach eigenem Bekunden aus dem „dogmatischen Schlummer“ (AA 4:260.). Aber Humes Kritik ist in Kants Augen nicht geeignet, die Realität der Spontaneität des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens grundsätzlich in Zweifel zu ziehen. Sie verdeutlicht aber, dass die transzendentalphilosophische Analyse des Verstandes, seiner reinen Begriffe und Grundsätze, als Rechtfertigung ihres objektiven Geltungsanspruchs zu verfolgen ist.
Als Kant in den frühen 1770er Jahren mit der Konzeption seiner Transzendentalphilosophie befasst war, berichtet er in einem Brief M. Herz, wie sich sein Denken seit De Forma weiterentwickelt hat: Er sei nunmehr auf etwas Wesentliches aufmerksam geworden, das „in der That den Schlüßel zu dem gantzen Geheimnisse, der bis dahin sich selbst noch verborgenen Metphys:, ausmacht“ (AA 10:130) und ihm selbst bisher in seinen metaphysischen Versuchen ebenso mangelte, wie allen anderen auch. „Ich frug mich nemlich selbst“, schreibt Kant, „auf welchem Grunde beruhet die Beziehung desienigen, was man in uns Vorstellung nennt, auf den Gegenstand?“ (ebd.).
Er skizziert in den folgenden Zeilen des Briefes zwei kausal-kognitive Erkenntniskonzeptionen, unter deren Prämisse die Beziehung zwischen Vorstellung und vorgestelltem Objekt leicht zu erklären ist: zum einen den kognitiven Kausalismus nach empiristischem Modell (Modell 1) und zum anderen den kognitiven Kausalismus nach dem klassischen Modell eines archetypischen Verstandes (Modell 2).
Während sowohl „die Möglichkeit […] des intellectus archetypi, auf dessen Anschauung die Sachen selbst sich gründen [Modell 2]“, als auch die „eines intellectus ectypi, der die data seiner logischen Behandlung bloß aus der sinnlichen Anschauung der Sachen schöpft [Modell 1]“ (AA 10:130), ohne Weiteres verständlich seien, ergäbe sich für einen endlichen Verstand, sofern seine Spontaneität „real“ sein soll, d.h. er selbst „Quelle“ objektiver Vorstellungen ist, ein zu klärendes Problem: Was ist der objektive Geltungsgrund a priori entspringender Vorstellungen eines endlichen Verstandes?[1]
Kants Lösung beinhaltet, innerhalb der Spontaneität des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens zu differenzieren und zwei Vermögen zu unterscheiden, nämlich Verstand und Vernunft. Ersterer ist bedingt spontan, seine Akte (diskursive Begriffe) sind objektiv gültig im empirischen Gebrauch, d.h. in Bezug auf sinnliche Gegenstände. Letztere ist absolut spontan, ihre Akte (Ideen) sind auch in der Anwendung gerade nicht durch Sinnliches bedingt. Allerdings eignet ihnen in der theoretischen Erkenntnis nur eine heuristische Einheitsfunktion und die kognitive Limitation, die die menschliche Erkenntnis auf Erscheinungen limitiert, reflektiert der abstrakt-negative Begriff des Dinges an sich (selbst betrachtet)[2]. Kant erweist die Spontaneität des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens also zwar als real in der theoretischen Erkenntnis, aber zugleich als ihrerseits durch Endlichkeit charakterisiert (These).
Der Vortrag entwickelt Kants kritischen Begriff der Spontaneität, indem er diese Zusammenhänge erläutert. Zentral ist die Analyse der kantischen Argumentation zu Beginn der B-Deduktion, durch welche die Verbindung als „Actus der Spontaneität der Vorstellungskraft“, die man „zum Unterschiede von der Sinnlichkeit Verstand nennen muß“ ausweist (vgl. CrV B 129f.). Es stellt sich einerseits die Frage, inwiefern mit dem Nachweis der nicht-rezeptiven Eigenart der Vorstellung der Verbindung im Fortgang der transzendentalen Deduktion mehr als die Dualität der kognitiven Vermögen erwiesen wird, und andererseits, aus welchen Gründen die Analyse der Erkenntnis in den ungleichartigen Elementen, sinnliche Anschauung und diskursiver Begriff, im kantischen System an ihr Ende kommt. Was folgt daraus für den kantischen Begriff der Spontaneität? Wo ist Raum für kreatives Denken?
[1] Vgl. Bauer, Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Kants Transzendentalphilosophie, (De Gruyter 2020), 43-45.
[2] Der Ausdruck ist die Übertragung des lateinischen ‚ens per se spectata‘ ins Deutsche.
Larissa Wallner (Munich)
On the Possibility of Novelty in Kant's critical Philosophy
Novelty is not one of Kant’ s central concerns due to the epochs scientific ideal and his conception of philosophy as systematic, methodologically strict enterprise. Nevertheless, he has an implicit but significant notion of what can be called “novelty proper” which is tightly connected to transcendental freedom. In this perspective it is a materialized representation, which is not psychologically and mechanically – but also not in it’ s properties and neither logically or morally – determined by preliminary causes and grounds. This is possible because it springs from the interaction of the transcendental and spontaneous power of imagination and the heautonomous power of judgment. When these faculties collide in a “happy relation” in the rare case of artistic genius, a complex process of pattern recognition and figurative formation evolves and results in the original, exemplary model of the new.
https://lmu-munich.academia.edu/LarissaWallner
Dr. David Kretz (Chicago)
Genius as the Form of Moral-Historical Agency in Kant
In the 3rd Critique (1790), Kant limits the concept of genius to the realm of fine art (schöne Kunst). This paper argues that, contrary to his own claim, genius also implicitly provides the conceptual form for how he theorized the agency involved in two other, interconnected realms. First, the act of becoming moral. No genius is required for knowing what the moral law is, or that one ought to follow it, of course. But to first adopt it as one’s overriding maxim (Grundmaxime), requires what Kant in the Religion (1792-4) calls a “revolution of the heart”. Genius, I argue, provides the conceptual form for such ‘revolutionary’ acts. This has important consequences for how freedom and necessity come together in Kant’s philosophy of history, which is often thought to leave no room for agency in a robust sense.
The problem in the philosophy of history is this. From the “Idea for a Universal History” (1784) onwards, Kant argues that (we may make regulative use of the idea that) our species’ goal is set for us by nature, and nature also provides a failsafe mechanism by which we will maximally approximate this goal, eventually: in essence, that mechanism consists in our natural inclination to compete with others, enlightened by human Verstand. But if that was all there is to it, then we might simply end up with a society of very happy (glücklich), very well policed devils, who are nonetheless not morally worthy (glückswürdig) of such happiness. Something else is needed to give us grounds for hope that at least as much moral progress is possible for the human species to also merit the civilizational and legal-political progress we make morally. But the agency involved in becoming moral seems to be a private, individual agency, not public, collective agency? How can there be historical moral progress, understood not as progress in the content of morality, which is historically invariant, but in more people becoming moral?
This is where the second kind of act, which also falls under the concept of genius, comes in: the act of act of establishing a new form of religion (or, ‘church’). Kant calls these “public revolution[s] in religion.” ‘Churches’, understood as institutions of moral education, are the outer, historically variant form which the inner, historically invariant moral law takes. The crux is now to see that these two acts – individuals privately becoming moral and individuals publicly establishing new religious forms – are, in fact, formally always and sometimes materially, one kind of act: the act of becoming moral in an exemplary way, potentially at least. They differ only in the quantitative scope of their reception, not qualitatively.
Establishing the formal unity of these two types of acts via the concept of genius lets us see how there can be agency, in the robust sense of moral agency, which is also, at the same time, genuinely historical agency, and, thus, how Kant’s philosophy of history not just needs to leave room for the possibility of moral progress, but actually theorizes the form of agency that establishes institutions which further it. Of course, these cannot guarantee moral progress the way natural inclinations enlightened by Verstand (we may suppose) guarantee civilizational and legal-political progress, but they give enough ground for hope for sufficient moral progress to ward off despair.
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