Patrick Frierson

The Moral Importance of Politeness in Kant's Anthropology

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1784), Kant explains that ethics, like physics, ‘will have its empirical part, but it will also have a rational part, … though here [in ethics] the empirical part might be given the special name practical anthropology ’ (4: 388). In the Groundwork , Kant suggests that anthropology, or the ‘power of judgment sharpened by experience’, has two roles, ‘to distinguish in what cases [moral laws] are applicable’ and ‘to gain for [moral laws] access to the human will’ (4: 389). Twelve years later, the first function, of applying the categorical imperative to specifically human situations, is incorporated into Kants Metaphysics of Morals (1797).

Character and evil in Kant's moral anthropology

in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains that moral anthropology studies the “subjective conditions in human nature that help or hinder [people] in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals” and insists that such anthropology “cannot be dispensed with” (6:217).1 But it is often difficult to find clear evidence of this sort of anthropology in Kant’s own works. in this paper, i discuss Kant’s account of character as an example of Kantian moral anthropology. Kant’s account of character is one of the most important parts of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.2 Kant describes the character of the person, in particular, as the “distinguishing mark of the human being as a rational being endowed with freedom” and says that character “indicates what the human being is prepared to make of himself” (7:285). recently, Kant commentators have gone even further. G. Felicitas Munzel, for example, claims that character is “the systematic link between the moral, aesthetic, and anthropological elements of Kant’s works.”3 this paper will not investigate the full richness of Kant’s account of character. instead, i focus on one particular problem that arises in Kant’s discussion of character—an apparent conflict between the moral relevance of character and the possibility of evil character. By showing why there is an apparent conflict and why it is merely apparent, i show some of the ways in which a particular subjective condition in human nature can help, but not force, people to fulfill the laws of a metaphysics of morals.

Kant's Empirical Account of Human Action

Let us take a voluntary action, for example, a malicious lie ... . First of all, we endeavor to discover the motives to which it has been due, and then, secondly, we proceed to determine how far the action ... can be imputed to the offender. As regards the first question, we trace the empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame ... . We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe the action is thus determined, we nonetheless blame the agent. [A554-55/B 582-83, emphasis added; cf. 5:95-9; 29:101920]

Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes

DESCARTES IS WELL KNOWN for his metaphysics and physics, the roots and trunk of his philosophical project. But Descartes’s morals are generally neglected, partly because they are so difficult to find. He does not dedicate a major published work to morality. His most direct comments on it are in letters to Princess Elizabeth and Pierre Chanut. The published work that most touches on moral issues is The Passions of the Soul, which is primarily a treatise on the relationship between mind and body. As a result of this lack of primary sources (and perhaps also a general prejudice in favor of metaphysics and epistemology in the history of philosophy), there have been only a few significant studies of Descartes’s moral philosophy in French, and only two major works devoted to it in English.2 This neglect of Descartes’s ethics is unfortunate, not least since ethical concerns sometimes influence his work in other areas. This influence is particularly evident in his account of the passions, which is presented in the context of a practical program of self-discipline and moral cultivation. Although this paper

Kant on mental disorder. Part 1: an overview.

This paper sets out Kant’s anthropological account of mental disorder. I begin with a discussion of the nature of Kant’s ‘pragmatic anthropology’ and the implications of the fact that his discussion of mental disorder takes place in that context. I then set out Kant’s taxonomy of the mind and discuss the various disorders affecting the cognitive faculty and the faculties of feeling and desire. I end with a brief discussion of Kant’s views on the causes, preventions, and treatments of mental disorder.

Kant on mental disorder. Part 2: Philosophical implications of Kant’s account:

This paper considers various philosophical problems arising from Kant’s account of mental disorder. Starting with the reasons why Kant considered his theory of mental disorder important, I then turn to the implications of this theory of Kant’s metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Given Kant’s account of insanity as ‘a totally different standpoint ... from which one sees all objects differently’ (7: 216), the Critique of Pure Reason should be read as offering a more social epistemology than typically recognized. Also, mental disorders that seem to undermine human freedom and rationality raise problems for Kant’s moral philosophy that his pragmatic anthropology helps to mitigate. Finally, I propose some implications of Kant’s account of mental disorder for contemporary work on mental illness.

Maria Montessori's Epistemology

This paper lays out the epistemology of Maria Montessori (1870–1952). I start with what I call Montessoris ‘interested empiricism’, her empiricist emphasis on the foundational role of the senses combined with her (broadly Jamesian) insistence that all cognition is infused with ‘interest’. I then discuss the unconscious. Partly because of her emphasis on early childhood, Montessori puts great emphasis on unconscious cognitive processes and develops a conceptual vocabulary to make sense of the continuity between conscious and unconscious processes. The final sections turn to two brief but important applications of this general epistemic framework, the importance of ‘meditation’ as an epistemic practice and Montessoris accounts of epistemic virtues.

Kant, Individual Responsibility, and Climate Change

In ‘Climate Change and Individual Duties’, Christian Baatz draws on two important features of Kant’s moral philosophy: his principle that ‘ought implies can’, and his distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. For Baatz, morality is intrinsically limited by what can be reasonably demanded of a person, since this is built into the principle that ought implies can. Imperfect duties are cases where this intrinsic limitation is made more acute due to epistemic limitations regarding what sorts of demands are truly reasonable. For Kant, however, there is no intrinsic ‘reasonable demand’ limitation within morality itself; if someone has a moral obligation, they have it regardless of danger to their well-being. Only because some obligations (imperfect duties) are directly only about adopting various ends (such as the happiness of others) can Kant alleviate the stringency of these obligations, and he does so differently than Baatz. I close my discussion of these differences with two questions, first, whether Kant’s flexibility regarding imperfect duties is helpful when applied to GHG emissions, and second, whether we should rethink some environmental obligations, seeing them as perfect duties. Baatz’s use of ‘ought implies can’ focuses on the high cost (not literal impossibility) of individuals contributing to a decrease in overall GHG emissions. In discussing the principle, he asks,

The Virtue Epistemology of Maria Montessori

This paper shows how Maria Montessoris thought can enrich contemporary virtue epistemology. After a short overview of her ‘interested empiricist’ epistemological framework, I discuss four representative intellectual virtues: sensory acuity, physical dexterity, intellectual love, and intellectual humility. Throughout, I show how Montessori bridges the divide between reliabilist and responsibilist approaches to the virtues and how her particular treatments of virtues offer distinctive and compelling alternatives to contemporary accounts. For instance, she emphasizes how sensory acuity is a virtue for which one can be responsible, highlights the embodied nature of cognition through a focus on physical dexterity, interprets intellectual love as a way of loving the world rather than as a love that takes knowledge as its object, and presents an alternative account of intellectual humility to contemporary emphases on the interpersonal dimensions of this virtue.

Denkungsart in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

Frierson address the question of how Kant sees “pragmatic anthropology.” He lays out Kant’s general sense of “pragmatic” and then his specific treatment of humans’ “mode of thought,” or Denkungsart, a concept central to the empirical investigation of human freedom. In the end, a discussion of this concept provides answers to the questions of how anthropology studies human beings “as free” and, more generally, what Kant’s pragmatic anthropology is.