Matthew C. Altman

Kant on Sex and Marriage: The Implications for the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Abstract When examined critically, Kants views on sex and marriage give us the tools to defend same-sex marriage on moral grounds. The sexual objectification of ones partner can only be overcome when two people take responsibility for one anothers overall well-being, and this commitment is enforced through legal coercion. Kants views on the unnaturalness of homosexuality do not stand up to scrutiny, and he cannot (as he often tries to) restrict the purpose of sex to procreation. Kant himself rules out marriage only when the partners cannot give themselves to one another equally – that is, if there is inequality of exchange. Because same-sex marriage would be between equals and would allow homosexuals to express their desire in a morally appropriate way, it ought to be legalized.

Introduction: Kant the Revolutionary

The era of German Idealism stands alongside ancient Greece and the French Enlightenment as one of the most fruitful and influential periods in the history of philosophy. Beginning with the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 and ending about ten years after Hegel’s death in 1831, the period of “classical German philosophy” transformed whole fields of philosophical endeavor.

Wolves, Dogs, and Moral Geniuses: Anthropocentrism in Schopenhauer and Freud

Schopenhauer and Freud reject the anthropocentrism of the Western philosophical tradition by claiming that humans and animals are motivated by the same impulses, but they reinforce elements of that anthropocentrism by retaining the identification of animality with self-interested savagery, and by reserving for humans the capacity to overcome that state.

A Practical Account of Kantian Freedom

Altman examines and evaluates competing interpretations of Kant’s theory of freedom and concludes that the only way for us to be free as noumena and causally determined as phenomena is to conceive of our actions in two different ways, either from the practical standpoint or the theoretical standpoint. That is, we can commit ourselves to causal determinism with regard to objective claims about the world, but in acting we must conceive of ourselves as free agents. This “practical account” of Kantian freedom has several explanatory advantages over both the compatibilist and the libertarian interpretations of Kant’s theory, and it is more consistent with the epistemic limitations that Kant establishes in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Conclusion: Kant the Philosopher

Abstract Kant is often characterized as a system-builder. The conclusion shows the ways in which Kant is a philosopher in the classical sense, as someone driven by questions that challenge basic epistemological and moral beliefs – even his own.

Fichte’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense

Fichte’s almost singular focus on consciousness has fueled the charge that he is a subjectivist, and, bolstered by the self-serving characterizations of the Wissenschaftslehre by Schelling and Hegel, this has led to Fichte’s relative neglect among contemporary philosophers. If we study Fichte’s philosophy on its own terms, however, we can correct this caricature. As Fichte understands it, the Wissenschaftslehre carries out the philosophical implications of Kantianism. Critics of Fichte often mistake his transcendental inquiry as a series of metaphysical claims. Thus they assume that realism is correct, and they see Fichte as reducing the world itself, rather than the world as representation, to consciousness. However, if we position the Wissenschaftslehre in its philosophical context, it becomes clear that his focus on consciousness is not a reduction of the world to the self, but a transcendental inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of experience, and specifically objective representations.

Nietzsche: The Therapeutic Function of Genealogy

Throughout this book, we have been developing, with Freudian resources, an account of qualified freedom. Human interpretation crucially enters into inheriting our personal and cultural histories, negotiating the demands of society, and expressing the basic drives possessed by embodied beings, but that activity also emerges out of these different conditions and is constrained by them. Nineteenth-century German philosophy tries to make sense of a divided self whose relation to the world and its own psyche are deeply troubled — limited epistemically and afflicted by forces that problematize its capacity for rational self-determination. We have discussed various attempts to come to terms what it means to be a situated subject: Fichte’s appeal to the Anstoss, the hermeneutic circle, and Marx’s challenge to the distinction between thinking and matter, among others. However, no philosopher challenges the model of the sovereign, self-possessed subject more than Nietzsche, whose work decisively rejects the faith in reason and progressive history that reaches its culmination in the work of Hegel.

Kant: The Inscrutable Subject

One of Freud’s fundamental insights is that our conception of reality is unconsciously permeated by phantasies,1 and it is fair to say that this idea would be impossible prior to Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy. By establishing that the activity of judgment (in part) constitutes reality, Kant demonstrates the illegitimacy of metaphysics and challenges Descartes’s appeal to immediate self-knowledge. Although Freud follows Kant in his commitment to the opacity of human motivations, Freud’s conception of the unconscious allows for repressed thoughts and emotions to be understood through the therapeutic work of psychoanalysis. Behaviors and symptoms can become meaningful within an analytic framework that makes them intelligible to consciousness. Unlike Kant’s thing in itself, the Freudian unconscious is positioned as part of the empirical domain, in principle accessible to scientific study.

Marx: Freeing Ourselves from Ourselves

Marx inherits from the Enlightenment the overarching goal of human liberation, but unlike the liberal focus on removing external forms of coercion, such as authoritarian governments or the institution of slavery, Marx emphasizes the importance of identifying and resisting internalized coercion. Accordingly, one of his persistent concerns is the way that ideology functions as a form of tyranny. In critiquing ideology, he exposes how the interests of the powerful shape not only the dominant beliefs but the institutions, norms, and practices of a society, and he offers those claims with the therapeutic intent of overturning the conditions of oppression.

Schelling: Methodologies of the Unconscious

Like Fichte, Schelling strives to overcome Kant’s dualisms. Unsatisfied with Fichte’s appeal to the I’s activity, Schelling attempts to derive both the subject and the object from what he takes to be a higher ground, which he calls the Absolute. Although the Absolute is necessarily opaque to consciousness, he proposes two methods of philosophical investigation: a negative philosophy that examines the development of the world as it is comprehended by reason, and a positive philosophy that apprehends the Absolute on its own (nonrational) terms. Schelling thus presents us with two alternatives: either the ground of consciousness is ignored in favor of consciousness itself, or it can be known directly, but without using reason to understand it. In appealing to nonrational intuition, he attempts to transcend the limits of reason and make claims about the basis of existence, but because they transcend the limits of reason, those claims cannot be rationally justified. Schelling is grappling with the epistemic problem of how consciousness can understand its own origins, but in doing so he runs afoul of Kant’s critique of metaphysics.