Body And Practice In Kant

Kant is generally conceived to have offered little attention to the fact that we experience the world in and through our bodies. This book argues that this standard image of the great German philosopher is radically wrong. Not only does Kant - throughout his career and in works published before and after the Critique of pure reason - reflect constantly upon the fact that human life is embodied, but the Critique of pure reason itself may be read as a critical reflection aimed at exploring some significant philosophical implications of this fact. Bringing this aspect of Kant's philosophy into focus is important, not only because it sheds new light on our understanding of Kant's work, but also because it is relevant to contemporary discussions in philosophy about embodiment, learning and practice. By taking his philosophy of embodiment into account, the author makes Kant stand out as a true contemporary in new and unexpected ways.

Kant is conceived to have offered little attention to the fact that we experience the world in and through our bodies. Arguing that this image of Kant is wrong, and that his work "Critique of Pure Reason" may be read as a critical reflection aimed at exploring some significant philosophical implications of the fact that human life is embodied.

The Kerygma of the Wilderness Traditions in the Hebrew Bible examines biblical writers' use of the wilderness traditions in the books of Exodus and Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Prophets, and the Writings to express their beliefs in God and their understandings of the community's relationship to God. Kerygma is the proclamation of God's actions with the purpose of affirming faith/or appealing to an obedient response from the community. The experiences of the wilderness community, who rebelled and refused to live according to God's purposes, serve as a polemic against disbelief in God and the refusal to embrace Israel's religious heritage. In the Writings, more than in the Prophets, the wilderness traditions are remembered with a notable resemblance to the traditions in Exodus and Numbers, which reflects a heightened interest in the ancient traditions in the closing turbulent period of Israelite history. Recollections of Israel's beginnings in the wilderness address problems associated with faith, obedience, and ultimately, the nature of the Israelite community.

The humanity formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative demands that we treat humanity as an end in itself. Because this principle resonates with currently influential ideals of human rights and dignity, contemporary readers often find it compelling, even if the rest of Kant's moral philosophy leaves them cold. Moreover, some prominent specialists in Kant's ethics recently have turned to the humanity formulation as the most theoretically central and promising principle of Kant'sethics. Nevertheless, despite the intuitive appeal and the increasingly recognized philosophical importance of the humanity formulation, it has received less attention than many other, less central, aspects of Kant's ethics. Richard Dean offers the most sustained and systematic examination of thehumanity formulation to date.Dean argues that the 'rational nature' that must be treated as an end in itself is not a minimally rational nature, consisting of the power to set ends or the unrealized capacity to act morally, but instead is the more properly rational nature possessed by someone who gives priority to moral principles over any contrary impulses. This non-standard reading of the humanity formulation provides a firm theoretical foundation for deriving plausible approaches to particular moral issues - and,contrary to first impressions, does not impose moralistic demands to pass judgment on others' character. Dean's reading also enables progress on problems of interest to Kant scholars, such as reconstructing Kant's argument for accepting the humanity formulation as a basic moral principle, and allows forincreased understanding of the relationship between Kant's ethics and supposedly Kantian ideas such as 'respect for autonomy'.

Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible.

This volume sheds new light on Immanuel Kant’s conception of anthropology. Neither a careful and widespread search of the sources nor a merely theoretical speculation about Kant’s critical path can fully reveal the necessarily wider horizon of his anthropology. This only comes to light by overcoming all traditional schemes within Kantian studies, and consequently reconsidering the traditional divisions within Kant’s thought. The goal of this book is to highlight an alternative, yet complementary path followed by Kantian anthropology with regard to transcendental philosophy. The present volume intends to develop this path in order to demonstrate how irreducible it is in what concerns some crucial claims of Kant’s philosophy, such as the critical defense of the unity of reason, the search for a new method in metaphysics and the moral outcome of Kant’s thought.

Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: Normative Naturalism, Quasi-Realist Expressivism, and Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism, which Derek Parfit now calls Non-Realist Cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word 'reality' in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use 'reality' in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths-such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths-raise no difficult ontological questions. Parfit discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity. Though Peter Railton is a Naturalist, he has widened his view by accepting some further claims, and he has suggested that this wider version of Naturalism could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Railton is right, since these theories no longer deeply disagree. Though Allan Gibbard is a Quasi-Realist Expressivist, he has suggested that the best version of his view could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Gibbard is right, since Gibbard and he now accept the other's main meta-ethical claim. It is rare for three such different philosophical theories to be able to be widened in ways that resolve their deepest disagreements. This happy convergence supports the view that these meta-ethical theories are true. Parfit also discusses the views of several other philosophers, and some other meta-ethical and normative questions.