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6 results

  • Schopenhauer, Kant and Compassion

  • Paul Guyer
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 17 / Issue 3 / November 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    16 October 2012, pp. 403-429
    Print publication:
    November 2012

  • Schopenhauer presents his moral philosophy as diametrically opposed to that of Kant: for him, pure practical reason is an illusion and morality can arise only from the feeling of compassion, while for Kant it cannot be based on such a feeling and can be based only on pure practical reason. But the difference is not as great as Schopenhauer makes it seem, because for him compassion is supposed to arise from metaphysical insight into the unity of all being, thus from pure if theoretical reason, while for Kant pure practical reason works only by effecting a feeling of respect (in the ‘Critical’ works) or by cultivating, i.e. affecting, natural dispositions to moral feeling (in the ‘post-Critical’ works). I argue that Kant's is the more realistic theory on this point.

  • 8 - The primacy of practical reason and the idea of a practical postulate

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 168-196

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the content of Immanuel Kant's three postulates, namely, existence of God, own transcendental freedom and immortality, and explains his arguments in their favour. It begins by commenting on Kant's argument, 'On the Primacy of Practical Reason', with a special emphasis on the logical structure of that argument. Kant argument is difficult to follow, and even more difficult to assess, among other things because it is framed in terms of the respective 'interests' of two cognitive faculties. That a practically necessary belief can be rational without evidence is taken to be equivalent to the claim that pure practical reason has primacy over pure speculative reason. The chapter looks at the idea of a postulate of pure practical reason and at the epistemological status Kant assigns to it. It concludes that the main idea behind Kant's argument does not depend on Kant's own, demanding conception of morality.

  • 9 - The meaning of the Critique of Practical Reason for moral beings: the Doctrine of Method of Pure Practical Reason

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 197-215

  • Summary

    The Doctrine of Method of Pure Practical Reason shows how carefully Immanuel Kant avoids being constrained by the pattern of the first Critique of Practical Reason. It has the important function of connecting the philosophical inquiry to its outcome in the life of moral subjects. Kant had given no special emphasis to this transition before the Critique. Kant announces that, in order to give proof of 'receptivity' to morality, he make use of 'observations anyone can make'. This experimental approach starts from an even lower level than one might expect, because it refers to 'conversation in mixed companies'. The function of the Doctrine of the Method, then, proves to belong to the very core of the project of the Critique, and provides an important key to the correct understanding of the work.

  • 5 - The Triebfeder of pure practical reason

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 90-118

  • Summary

    After determining the concept of the object of pure practical reason in Chapter II of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant takes up the motivational issue in Chapter III, which deals with what he terms the Triebfeder of pure practical reason. In his chapter on the springs of pure practical reason, Kant undertakes to explicate, in the light of the Factum of reason, how pure reason is practical in the case of the human being, and more generally in that of a finite subject having a share in this Factum. Kant's account has merely described how the moral law can infringe the inclinations. This chapter considers the effect the moral law has on feeling through its bearing on the propensities of self-love and self-conceit. Kant says that when the moral law strikes down self-conceit, the direct effect on feeling is the negative, or displeasing, sentiment of humiliation.

  • 9 - The Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason in the Second Critique (CPrR:107–121)

  • Edited by Karl Ameriks
  • Otfried Höffe, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy
    Published online:
    13 November 2009
    Print publication:
    27 April 2009, pp 198-212

  • Summary

    In the Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant identifies the relevant dialectic as the consequence of reason's attempt to discover the absolute totality of conditions governing a given condition, and not, as he had in the Groundwork, as a conflict between the law of reason and the maxims based on wishes and inclinations. In order to assess Kant's arguments, one should first remind us of the particular error of the ancients to which Kant refers in the second chapter of the 'Analytic' of pure practical reason. According to Kant, the Greek thinkers made the mistake of identifying the concept of the morally good with the concept of the highest good and therefore with an object which they intended afterwards to make the determining ground of the will in the moral law. Transcendental idealism appeared to be the only way of resolving the problem of the antinomies.

  • 10 - The Postulates of Pure Practical Reason (CPrR:122–148)

  • Edited by Karl Ameriks
  • Otfried Höffe, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy
    Published online:
    13 November 2009
    Print publication:
    27 April 2009, pp 213-228

  • Summary

    The postulates of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God stand or fall with Immanuel Kant's doctrine of the highest good. The will can only respond to the unconditioned demand to promote the highest good on the assumption that reason holds the highest good to be possible. The claim presupposes three further propositions: that the theoretical concepts of freedom, immortality, the soul and God are pure rational concepts with no corresponding intuitions; that they can therefore contribute nothing to the cognition of these objects; but that they do indeed have objects. What Kant calls rational belief or faith depends upon theoretical philosophy insofar as the latter has to show that the existence of those objects posited by the postulates can indeed be thought. The object of pure practical reason presupposes an author of the world who is characterized by the highest perfection.