Immanuel Kant (4)

Anthropology

Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. Transcripts of Kant's lectures on anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.

Kant was the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted in two dimensions "what belongs to a human being's faculty of desire":"his natural aptitude or natural predisposition" and "his temperament or sensibility". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic, phlegmatics as balanced and weak, sanguines as balanced and energetic, and melancholics as emotional and weak.

These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits. Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explores the things that a human "can and should make of himself".

Racism

Kant's theory of race and his prejudicial beliefs are among the most contentious areas of recent Kant scholarship. While few, if any, dispute the overt racism and chauvinism present in his work, a more contested question is the degree to which it degrades or invalidates his other contributions. His most severe critics assert that Kant intentionally manipulated science to support chattel slavery and discrimination.

Others acknowledge that he lived in an era of immature science, with many erroneous beliefs, some racist, all appearing decades before evolution, molecular genetics, and other sciences that today are taken for granted. Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism. Philosopher Charles W. Mills is unequivocal: "Kant is also seen as one of the central figures in the birth of modern 'scientific' racism. Whereas other contributors to early racial thought like Carolus Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had offered only 'empirical' (scare-quotes necessary!) observation, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race."

Using the four temperaments of ancient Greece, Kant proposed a hierarchy of racial categories including white Europeans, black Africans, and red Native Americans. Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in (1795).

Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and that "fusing of races" is undesirable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He states that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, nature has here made a law of just the opposite".

Kant was also an anti-Semite, believing that Jews were incapable of transcending material forces, which a moral order required. In this way, Jews are presented as the opposite of autonomous, rational Christians, and therefore incapable of being incorporated into an ethical Christian society. In his "Anthropology", Kant called the Jews "a nation of cheaters" and portrayed them as "a group that has followed not the path of transcendental freedom but that of enslavement to the material world".

Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who he believed often glossed over this part of his life and works. Pauline Kleingeld argues that, while Kant "did defend a racial hierarchy until at least the end of the 1780s", his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life.

In particular, she argues that Kant rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework.

While Kant's racist rhetoric is indicative of the state of scholarship and science during the 18th century, German philosopher Daniel-Pascal Zorn explains the risk of taking period quotations out of context. Many of Kant's most outrageous quotations are from a series of articles from 1777-1788, a public exchange among Kant, Herder, natural scientist Georg Forster, and other scholars prominent in that period.

Kant asserts that all races of humankind are of the same species, challenging the position of Forster and others that the races were distinct species. While his commentary is clearly biased at times, certain extreme statements were patterned specifically to paraphrase or counter Forster and other authors. By considering the full arc of Kant's scholarship, Zorn notes the progression in both his philosophical and his anthropological works, "with which he argues, against the zeitgeist, for the unity of humanity".

Influence and Legacy

Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e., that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried on at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted of several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in subsequent philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:

- The human subject seen as the center of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are "for us";

- the notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits of the human ability to know entirely a priori;

- the notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence... : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me";

- the concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"; that is, that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, several conditions must be understood:

- the claim that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
- the concept of moral autonomy as central to humanity; and
- the assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as mere means.

Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction.

Historical Influence

During his own life, much critical attention was paid to Kant's thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German Idealism generally, in the UK and the US. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive, but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.

Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e., human consciousness) apart from the living individual as well as from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction. Similar concerns motivated Hegel's criticisms of Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community.

In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.

Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain by philosophers such as Thomas Carlyle to challenge the nineteenth-century decline in religious faith. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time. Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. Like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi, and Fichte before him, Schopenhauer was critical of Kant's theory of the thing-in-itself.

Things-in-themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe, nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the Critique of Pure Reason, philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing-in-itself. Many have argued that, if such a thing exists beyond experience, then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience.

With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's own influence began to wane, but a re-examination of his ideas began in Germany in 1865 with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen by Otto Liebmann, whose motto was "Back to Kant". There proceeded an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as Neo-Kantianism. Kant's notion of "critique" has been more broadly influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry.

Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitation - flatness - that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".

Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through the a priori intuition of space and time, as transcendental preconditions of experience. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers

With his Perpetual Peace, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science. More concretely, constructivist theorist Alexander Wendt proposed that the anarchy of the international system could evolve from the "brutish" Hobbesian anarchy understood by realist theorists, through Lockean anarchy, and ultimately a Kantian anarchy in which states would see their self-interests as inextricably linked to the well being of other states, thus transforming international politics into a far more peaceful form.

Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill, and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.

Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They have argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophyhaving translated all three of Kant's critiquesserved as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to Westernize in China.

Because of the thoroughness of Kant's paradigm shift, his influence extends well beyond this to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology. Kant's influence extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciencesas in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget, and Carl Gustav Jung. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, although it was one which he later criticized and rejected. In the 2020s, there was a renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.

Bibliography

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in English Translation, 16 vols., ed. Guyer, Paul, and Wood, Allen W. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992
- Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770. Ed. and trans. David Walford with Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- Lectures on Logic. Ed. and trans. J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- Opus postumum. Ed. Eckart Förster, trans. Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Practical Philosophy. Ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Religion and Rational Theology. Ed. and trans.Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Lectures on Metaphysics. Ed. and trans. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- Lectures on Ethics. Ed. Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind, trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Correspondence. Ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, trans. Gary Hatfield, Michael Friedman, Henry Allison, and Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Notes and Fragments. Ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Anthropology, History, and Education, Ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Lectures on Anthropology, Ed. Allen W. Wood and Robert B. Louden Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Natural Science, Ed. Eric Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

List of Major Works

Abbreviations used in body of article are boldface in brackets. Unless otherwise noted, pagination is to the critical Akademie edition, which can be found in the margins of the Cambridge translations.

1749: Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
1755: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens [UNH] (German: Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
1755: Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
1755: A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
1756: The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology [PM] (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophia naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
1762: The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
1763: The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
1763: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy [NQ] (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
1764: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime [OFBS] (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
1764: Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
1764: Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) [PNTM] (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
1766: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer [DSS] (Träume eines Geistersehers)
1768: On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space [1768] (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
1770: Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World [ID] (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis [doctoral thesis])
1775: On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
1781: First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason [CPuR A] (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
1783: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics [PFM] (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
1784: "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" [WE?] ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
1784: "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" [UH] ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
1785: "Determination of the Concept of a Human Race" [DCHR] (Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace)
1785: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals [G] (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
1786: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science [MFNS] (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
1786: "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" [OT]("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
1786: Conjectural Beginning of Human History [CB] (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
1787: Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason [CPuR B] (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
1788: Critique of Practical Reason [CPracR] (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
1790: Critique of Judgment [CPJ] (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
1793: Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason [RBMR] (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
1793: On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice [TP] (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
1795: [PP] ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
1797: Metaphysics of Morals [MM] (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
1798: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [APPV] (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
1798: Conflict of Faculties [CF] (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
1800: Logic (Logik)
1803: On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
1804: Opus Postumum [OP]
1817: Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]

Collected Works in German

Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902-38) in 1895,[206] and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:

I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1-9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10-13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14-23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24-29).

An electronic version is also available: Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1-23).