A Symposium on Kant

161 Pages·1964·9.88 MB·English

by  Edward G. Ballard, Richard L. Barber, James K. Feibleman, Carl H. Hamburg, Harold N. Lee, Louise Nisbet Roberts, Robert Whittemore (auth.)

Tulane Studies in Philosophy
Volume III
A SYMPOSIUM ON KANT
This volume may be purchased for
$2.00, plus postage, from
The Tulane University Bookstore,
New Orleans 18, La.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
F 0 RE w 0 RD---------------·-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5
THE K.ANTIAN SoLUTION To THE PROBLEM oF MAN WITHIN
NATURE: Edward G. Ballard______________________________________________ 7
Two LoGICS OF MoDALITY: Richard L. Barber____________________ 41
KANT AND METAPHYSics: James K. Feibleman____________________ 55
KANT, CASSIRER AND THE CONCEPT
OF SPACE: Car1 H. Hamburg_ _____________________________ .________________ 89
THE RIGIDITY OF KANT's CATEGORIEs: Harold N. Lee __________ 113
NoTES ON THE JuDGMENT OF TASTE: Louise Nisbet Roberts 123
THE METAPHYSICS OF THE SEVEN FORMULATIONS
OF THE MoRAL ARGUMENT: Robert Whittemore_ ___________ 133
ISBN 978-90-247-0277-0 ISBN 978-94-011-7493-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-7493-0
FOREWORD
T
HE past does not change; it cannot, for what has happened
cannot be undone. Yet how are we to understand what
has happened? Our perspective on it lies in the present,
and is subject to continual change. These changes, made in
the light of our new knowledge and new experience, call for
fresh evaluations and constant reconsideration.
It is now one hundred fifty years since the death of
Immanuel Kant, and this, the third volume of Tulane Studies
in Philosophy is dedicated to the commemoration of the
event. The diversity of the contributions to the volume serve
as one indication of Kant's persistent importance in philoso
phy. His work marks one of the most enormous turns in
the whole history of human thought, and there is still much
to be done in estimating its achievement. His writings have
not been easy to assimilate. The exposition is difficult and
labored; it is replete with ambiguities, and even with what
often appear to be contradictions. Such writings allow for
great latitude in interpretation. Yet who would dare ·to
omit Kant from the account? The force of a man's work is
measured by his influence on other thinkers; and here, Kant
has few superiors.
Of no man whose impact upon the history of ideas has
been as great as that of Kant can it be said with finality: this
5
6 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
is his philosophy. It is exactly because he was struggling
toward ideas that outstripped the language and the concepts
of his day that his writings are difficult and must be in
terpreted. He was developing concepts that could not be
adequately conveyed in the words of his contemporaries. We
read his own words in the light of the ideas which emerge
from his thought, and which have been made definite, classi
fied and tagged by his successors. We have no recourse but
to interpret his philosophy in the light of what grew out of
it, and diverse indeed are the lines of this development.
It is a measure of Kant's genius that so many different
streams can equally flow from his writings. The following
essays will help to take this measure by illustrating the
range and diversity of the ways in which his philosophy
may be understood. Probably each generation will have its
own Kant; it may be hoped that the essays in the present
volume will help to reveal ours.
J.K.F.
H.N.L.
New Orleans,
May, 1954.
THE KANTIAN SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF MAN
WITHIN NATURE
Edward G. Ballard
K
ANT is not infrequently regarded as a philosopher whose
only serious concern was the rescue of Newtonian
mechanics from the Humian skepticism. He certainly in
tended to perform this rescue, - as a means, however, to a
further end. This further end is the elaboration and defense
of a doctrine which regards human nature as something
other than a mere cog within the Newtonian world machine.
Evidently, then, the second Critique is not an afterthought
but is the designed consequent of the first. The real move
ment of Kant's thought cannot be grasped, I think, unless
the problems of nature and knowledge of nature be under
stood as a prelude-albeit a necessary prelude-to the
problem of human nature. The intent of this paper is to
offer a critical presentation of these two problems with what
I believe to be the Kantian emphasis.
The goal of philosophy is to find a single coherent
explanation of all of experience, or perhaps of the whole of
reality. The way to this goal lies through a tangle of
problems. It could be seen very early in the history of
philosophy that this group of problems is not a simple series.
For example, it will be recalled, a tension began to appear
7
8 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
even before Socrates' life time between speculations on
nature and speculations on human nature. A solution to one
of these problems appeared to render impossible a satis
factory solution to the other. Thus, Democritus' atomistic
and mechanistic solution to the problem of nature seemed
to other philosophers either to deform man or to exclude
him from the natural world. To prevent this intolerable
consequence, Plato and the classic tradition built up a
philosophy in which man is not reducible to nori-human
elements and in which, on the contrary, nature itself is
explained by analogy to · the artist. The avoidance of a
mechanocentric doctrine of man seems to have entailed, for
better or for worse, an anthropocentric doctrine of nature.
However rich in humanistic values this classic tradition
undoubtedly became, it remained poverty stricken in respect
to knowledge of nature. Then, after the Renaissance dis
coveries and its invention of a new method, the tables were
turned and a new metaphysics, built upon the machine
analogy, took the place of the classical humanistic philoso
phy. Although this mechanistic doctrine was immensely
fruitful in respect to physics, it did not prove to be one whit
more successful than ancient atomism in providing a
rationale for human nature and its values. Many thinkers
came to regard mechanism as a threat to the whole culture
and its human uses. The mere threat of this consequence
was ground enough for a renewed anxiety which expressed
itself in various formulas for modifying the naturalistic or
the humanistic doctrines and. for conserving the mutually
consistent features of both. But these efforts were never
more than partially satisfactory. And indeed it could be
suspected that the body of knowledge built upon the
mechanistic analogy was radically contradictory to that
reared upon the basis of the artist analogy. This opposition
is recorded in various antitheses, not the least important of
which is the antithesis of freedom and determinism.
Kant's most characteristic trait, his unabating effort to
discover unity in experience, would not permit his remain
ing satisfied either with this antithesis or with any make
shift adjustment between its two alternatives. His manifest
desire is thoroughly to understand how human values are
THE KANTIAN SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF MAN 9
possible and attainable in a world of rigorously ordered
physical fact. This is to hold that the doctrines in philoso
phy derived from both the mechanistic analogy and the
artistic analogy are coherent and possible within the same
intellectural framework. If he can demonstrate the co
herence of scientific knowledge with humanistic insight,
then perhaps he can show in particular that human free
dom is independent of the mechanical world but not contra
dictory to it, and then, finally, that the human being can
effect changes in the mechanical world for which he alone
is responsible. In order to secure any hope of maintaining
these very difficult propositions, it is evident that he will
certainly be obliged to explain knowledge of nature in such
a way as to exclude neither the anthropological nor the
mechanical analogy, in order to uncover at least the germs
of axioms which will be needed to explain the nature of
value and the human pursuit of ends within a determined
world. We must, therefore, move to Kant's treatment of this
problem through his theory of knowledge and his theory
of the nature of the physical world. The latter, issuing in the
doctrine of the phenomenological object, appears at first
glance to promise most favorably for the humanistic studies.
The second glance, however, may be less encouraging. Pos
sibly Kant merely translates the old conflict between the
nature-centered and the man-centered studies into another
language. Or possibly he caught at least a glimpse of their
essential unity.
The present discussion of these matters will be centered
around the views which Kant expressed in the Critique of
Pure Reason and the Prologemena. This limitation will be
no handicap, for the critique of the cognitive use of reason
must, in defining its own boundaries, develop the notion of
the self and nature1 as well as the notion of non-human
nature . . . It should be added that my ·interpretation of
Kant's solution to the problem of nature must be more
lengthy than the treatment of his solution to the problem of
human nature, for it will be necessary to move through a
criticism of a certain view (the "impositional view") of Kant's
1. Prot. S 60.