Week 3:
Lecture:
- Kant: enter the contract because you’re free
Biography:
- Born in 1724 in Königsberg in Prussia (as it then was, now part of the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast).
- Came from a Pietist but not overly religious family.
- Lived frugally, punctually. Suffered from poor health for much of his life
- Worked on metaphysics, morality, aesthetics, politics, law, astronomy
- Central works: Critique of Pure Reason (1781;1787); Critique of Practical Reason (1788); Critique of Judgment (1790).
- Key works in political philosophy: Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals (1785); Metaphysics of Morals - Doctrine of
Right (1797); Theory and Practice (1793).
- Generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment, and one of the greatest philosophers of all
time.
- Died in Königsberg in 1804.
Readings:
- Rauscher: introductory summary
- Ripstein: a brief and clear account of Kant’s theory of politics
o Most important
- Sangiovanni: a short + punchy challenge to Kant/Ripstein’s account
- Korsgaard: defends + qualifies Kant’s position on rebellion.
- Greatest work in contemporary moral philosophy
o Parfit, On What Matters (2011), Chapters 8-9, 12-13
Building blocks of Kant’s philosophy:
- Enlightenment- look to the world [observation] - to find out the world. Finding out truths about the world by observing it
o ‘Empiricism was revolutionary, but Kant was struck by its serious limitations
Experience is fallible (‘is this a dagger which I see before me?’) - it sometimes fails you/lies to you.
Experience is variable/subjective (Trump: ‘I’m doing a great job!’)
Things strike us differently- how to arbitrate these disagreements?
o If we build the world on experience, we are building it on shaky grounds.
o ‘Is there anything we can say about the world without relying on experience? [and no reliance on scripture]
Anything safe from the limitations?
Yes- certain things must be true for us to experience things at all.
‘The very possibility of experience depends on certain presuppositions
How to find these things? Presuppositions discovered by pure reason safe from fallibility of
experience
‘Transcendental argument: certain concepts ‘transcend’ experience/intuition
o Form of argument that tries to uncover the necessary presuppositions of any experience
that we have. The stuff it discovers transcends experience- prescends experience. Must be
in place before experience exists.
‘To say ‘the book is on the table’ I must have the concept of space
Note the ‘regressive’ + ‘progressive’ aspects of the transcendental argument
o We start from experience (book on table); we go back to its necessary suppositions
(space); we go forth to general claims (there is space)
Does this prove there is space? No, but it tells us what we must believe (there’s space) or what we
cannot believe (no space), given what we believe
o Something must be true for us to even understand the sentence - before we even
come to decide whether it is true or false.
The necessary presuppositions of a point of view of the world.
From pure reason to free will:
- Kant believes that morality is one thing, politics is another etc- what unites them is a method
- Starts off from what we believe
o Kant uses transcendental argument to uncover necessary presuppositions of our beliefs about ourselves, what we
owe to others, the role of the state, etc.
o He then uses those presuppositions to help us clarify and revise our beliefs
o Before turning to politics, we will look at his work on reason and morality
o Descartes said: cogito ergo sum. Kant takes this further…
Descartes: how do I know that I’m not in the matrix? Why can’t I doubt everything, therefore? I
know I exist because I am thinking- I think therefore I am.
A being that takes itself to have thoughts must take itself to have reason
Thoughts have content. Distinguishing content of thoughts from truth value- then distinction
between:
Lecture:
- Kant: enter the contract because you’re free
Biography:
- Born in 1724 in Königsberg in Prussia (as it then was, now part of the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast).
- Came from a Pietist but not overly religious family.
- Lived frugally, punctually. Suffered from poor health for much of his life
- Worked on metaphysics, morality, aesthetics, politics, law, astronomy
- Central works: Critique of Pure Reason (1781;1787); Critique of Practical Reason (1788); Critique of Judgment (1790).
- Key works in political philosophy: Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals (1785); Metaphysics of Morals - Doctrine of
Right (1797); Theory and Practice (1793).
- Generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment, and one of the greatest philosophers of all
time.
- Died in Königsberg in 1804.
Readings:
- Rauscher: introductory summary
- Ripstein: a brief and clear account of Kant’s theory of politics
o Most important
- Sangiovanni: a short + punchy challenge to Kant/Ripstein’s account
- Korsgaard: defends + qualifies Kant’s position on rebellion.
- Greatest work in contemporary moral philosophy
o Parfit, On What Matters (2011), Chapters 8-9, 12-13
Building blocks of Kant’s philosophy:
- Enlightenment- look to the world [observation] - to find out the world. Finding out truths about the world by observing it
o ‘Empiricism was revolutionary, but Kant was struck by its serious limitations
Experience is fallible (‘is this a dagger which I see before me?’) - it sometimes fails you/lies to you.
Experience is variable/subjective (Trump: ‘I’m doing a great job!’)
Things strike us differently- how to arbitrate these disagreements?
o If we build the world on experience, we are building it on shaky grounds.
o ‘Is there anything we can say about the world without relying on experience? [and no reliance on scripture]
Anything safe from the limitations?
Yes- certain things must be true for us to experience things at all.
‘The very possibility of experience depends on certain presuppositions
How to find these things? Presuppositions discovered by pure reason safe from fallibility of
experience
‘Transcendental argument: certain concepts ‘transcend’ experience/intuition
o Form of argument that tries to uncover the necessary presuppositions of any experience
that we have. The stuff it discovers transcends experience- prescends experience. Must be
in place before experience exists.
‘To say ‘the book is on the table’ I must have the concept of space
Note the ‘regressive’ + ‘progressive’ aspects of the transcendental argument
o We start from experience (book on table); we go back to its necessary suppositions
(space); we go forth to general claims (there is space)
Does this prove there is space? No, but it tells us what we must believe (there’s space) or what we
cannot believe (no space), given what we believe
o Something must be true for us to even understand the sentence - before we even
come to decide whether it is true or false.
The necessary presuppositions of a point of view of the world.
From pure reason to free will:
- Kant believes that morality is one thing, politics is another etc- what unites them is a method
- Starts off from what we believe
o Kant uses transcendental argument to uncover necessary presuppositions of our beliefs about ourselves, what we
owe to others, the role of the state, etc.
o He then uses those presuppositions to help us clarify and revise our beliefs
o Before turning to politics, we will look at his work on reason and morality
o Descartes said: cogito ergo sum. Kant takes this further…
Descartes: how do I know that I’m not in the matrix? Why can’t I doubt everything, therefore? I
know I exist because I am thinking- I think therefore I am.
A being that takes itself to have thoughts must take itself to have reason
Thoughts have content. Distinguishing content of thoughts from truth value- then distinction
between:
