Immanuel Kant Und Die Berliner Aufkl Rung

Immanuel Kants Beziehungen zum Kreis der Berliner Aufklarer waren vielfaltig. Schuler, die in Berlin lebten, korrespondierten zeitlebens mit ihm, aber auch judische Gelehrte der Stadt und Personen in offentlichen Amtern. Unter Friedrich dem Grossen genoss er hohe Protektion, unter dem Nachfolger Friedrich Wilhelm II. wurde er gemassregelt. Das Buch entfaltet diese Beziehungen nicht systematisch, sondern in Facetten. Es enthalt u. a. Beitrage uber Kants Konigsberger Lebensverhaltnisse, die Berliner Schuler, die Berlinische Monatsschrift, die judische Aufklarung, den Spinozismusstreit, die Reaktionen auf die Franzosische Revolution, sowie die preussischen Zwangsmassnahmen. Uber das Hauptthema hinaus fuhren Aufsatze uber Kants Verhaltnis zu Basedows Philanthropin und uber die Kant-Ausgabe der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Da die Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin 1999 Kants Manuskripte der letzten Lebensjahre erworben hat, schliesst der Band mit zwei Beitragen uber dieses "Opus postumum".

Although Kant was involved in the education debates of his time, it is widely held that in his mature philosophical writings he remained silent on the subject. In her groundbreaking Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy, G. Felicitas Munzel finds extant in Kant’s writings the so-called missing critical treatise on education. It appears in the Doctrines of Method with which he concludes each of his major works. In it, Kant identifies the fundamental principles for the cultivation of reason’s judgment when it comes to cognition, beauty, nature, and the exercise of morality while subject to the passions and inclinations that characterize the human experience. From her analysis, Munzel extrapolates principles for a cosmopolitan education that parallels the structure of Kant’s republican constitution for perpetual peace. With the formal principles in place, the argument concludes with a query of the material principles that would fulfill the formal conditions required for an education for freedom.

This 2006 volume provides the broadest and deepest introduction to Kant currently available.

Modern liberal democracy is praised in a universalistic Western view as the best political system and a quasi-prerequisite for full acceptance by the community of traditional hegemonial States. However, democracy is fully developed in only less than five percent of States globally, and in decline in most Western countries. In this book, democracy is presented as a political system in danger due to its intrinsic flaws and tendency to self-destruction. The major flaw is that “human nature” is not adequately considered in democracy’s conception: its citizens, “We, the people”, as individuals and as crowds, are liberated into a dangerous ideology prioritizing “freedom from society” over “membership in society” and thereby causing decline in libertinism, hedonism and polarization in divided and finally broken societies. Proposals to resolve the rapidly growing crisis include education of citizens into the ethics of reciprocal altruism, grounded in evidence from biological sciences and humanities, professionalization of politics, and a fundamental change of politics towards evidence-based decision-making, thus ending politicking, politicians' personality affairs, and the cold war of political parties, the representative of class warfare in the sheep-skin of “interest-group pluralism”. The author uses his background in human biology and psychology to discuss the relevance of philosophical and politological issues around democracy raised in past and recent literature, and to highlight the prospects of using scientific knowledge for evidence-based socialization of the "human factor".