Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy

238 Pages·1984·25.392 MB·English

by  Allen W. Wood (editor)

SELF AND
NATURE IN
KANT’S
PHILOSOPHY
EDITED BY
ALLEN W. WOOD
PHILOSOPHY
SELF AND NATURE IN
KANT S PHILOSOPHY
Edited by ALLEN W. WOOD
This book is made up of eleven essays that deal with fundamental
aspects of Kant’s philosophy. All the contributors are distinguished,
widely known American philosophers. Nine of the essays have never
been published before, and Lewis White Beck’s “What Have We Learned
from Kant?” appears here in English for the first time.
Lewis White Beck, Terence Irwin, Allen W. Wood, Patricia Kitcher,
Margaret D. Wilson, and Philip Kitcher have contributed major essays.
Ralf Meerbote, Jonathan Bennett, Sydney Shoemaker, Elizabeth Potter,
and Charles Parsons offer commentaries on each of the major essays
except Beck’s (which is introductory in nature). Among the issues ad­
dressed are those of self and free will, Berkeley’s idealism, Kant’s view
of the natural world, and Kant’s philosophy of mind and philosophy
of science.
Because the essays largely avoid narrow issues of textual interpreta­
tion and are almost entirely concerned with the basic philosophical
issues raised by Kant, the collection should find a large readership
among advanced students and specialists in many areas of philosophy.
ALLEN W. WOOD is Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Cor­
nell University Press has published three of his earlier books: Kant's
Moral Religion, Kant’s Rational Theology, and, with Gertrude M. Clark,
a translation of Kant’s Lectures on Philosophical Theology.
Cornell Paperbacks
Cornell University Press
ISBN D-fiom-iaba-a
Self and Nature in
Kant’s Philosophy
Also by Allen W. Wood
Kant’s Rational Theology
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology.
Translated by Allen W. Wood and Gertrude M. Clark
Self and Nature in
Kant’s Philosophy
E
dited by
A W. W
llen ood
Cornell University Press
I L
thaca and ondon
Copyright © 1984 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts
Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1984 by Cornell University Press.
Published in the United Kingdom by
Cornell University Press Ltd., London.
International Standard Book Number (cloth) 0-8014-1610-8
International Standard Book Number (paper) 0-8014-9268-8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-76781
Printed in the United States of America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information
appears on the last page of the book.
The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production
Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Contents
Preface 7
Abbreviations Used in Citing Works of Kant 13
I. What Have We Learned from Kant?
by Lewis White Beck
II. Morality and Personality: Kant and Green
by Terence Irwin 31
Commentary: Kant on Freedom and the Rational
and Morally Good Will
by Ralf Meerbote
III. Kant’s Compatibilism
by Allen W. Wood 73
Commentary: Kant’s Theory of Freedom
by Jonathan Bennett 102
IV. Kant’s Real Self
by Patricia Kitcher 113
Commentary: Self-Consciousness and Synthesis
by Sydney Shoemaker 148
V. The ‘Phenomenalisms’ of Berkeley and Kant
by Margaret D. Wilson 157
Commentary: Kant’s Scientific Rationalism
by Elizabeth Potter 174
VI. Kant’s Philosophy of Science
by Philip Kitcher 185
Commentary: Remarks on Pure Natural Science
by Charles Parsons 216
Contributors 229
Index 231

Preface
Anyone familiar with Kant’s thought knows the famous pas­
sage from the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason: “Two
things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration
and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the
starry heavens above me and the moral law within me” (161g
i66e). The passage identifies two important focuses of Kant’s
philosophy: the natural or sensible world in its “unbounded mag­
nitude” (“the starry heavens”) and the rational personality or
“invisible self” (with whose reality the moral law acquaints us).
These two focuses, however, are also related. Not only are they
alike objects of admiration and awe, but they are involved with
one another: the self is for Kant the point of origin, the “lawgiver
of nature,” just as its freedom is “the keystone of the. whole
architecture of the system of pure reason and even of speculative
reason” (320g Ö2e; 3g 3c). Further, the two focuses are united
in the direct certainty Kant says we have of them: “I do not
merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in
darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I
see them before me, and I associate them directly with the con­
sciousness of my own existence” (ißifg i66e).
Yet both these relationships between the invisible self and
sensible nature (the self as lawgiver of nature and the immediate
certainty of self and nature) have seemed to Kant’s readers to
raise troubling questions for him. How does the world that—as
Kant insists—exists independently of us come to be governed by
Preface
laws arising a priori from the understanding? What is nature if
it is posited—or at least legislated to—by the human self? Does
not Kant’s transcendental idealism, like all idealism, reduce the
sensible world or nature to a mere illusion? How can Kantian
transcendental idealism be consistent with his insistence, in his
“refutation” of dogmatic and problematic idealism, that a nature
outside of me is given along with my consciousness of myself?
Do we, on the other hand, have any real certainty, as Kant
claims, of the free, active self in his theory? Indeed, can we even
form a coherent conception of this self? In any case, how is the
noumenal self posited by Kant’s “two worlds” theory related to
the practically free self, which is the subject of Kantian morality?
How is it related to the thinking, unifying self, which is the source
of the categories and the “lawgiver of nature”? And how are any
of these selves related to the empirical self, which is the subject
of sensible desires and the result of its own self-affection?
It would be absurd to claim that any essay in this volume
definitively answers any of these questions, for the questions will
probably divide and perplex Kant’s readers for as long as Kant
has any readers. But the essays do address these questions, and
each scholar has something both original and responsible to say
about them. The essays are based on papers and commentaries
presented in November 1981 at a colloquium sponsored by Cor­
nell University’s Society for the Humanities, commemorating the
two hundredth anniversary of the first publication of Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason. The aim of the colloquium was not so
much to focus on a specific theme or themes in Kant’s philosophy
as to bring together for thoughtful exchange some of the best
philosophical scholars now working on Kant’s philosophy. The
essays display some common concerns, with Kant’s conception
of nature and natural science, with Kant’s theory of moral au­
tonomy and free will, and with Kant’s conception of the thinking
self.
Philip Kitcher Ends some strongly anti-empiricist yet realist
elements in Kant’s philosophy of science and argues that this
side of Kant’s philosophy, so interpreted, is more central to Kant’s
philosophical project than has usually been thought. Charles
Parsons has reservations about Kitcher’s way of interpreting
8