Kant Anthropology Imagination Freedom

In a new reading of Immanuel Kant’s work, this book interrogates his notions of the imagination and anthropology, identifying these – rather than the problem of reason – as the two central pivoting orientations of his work. Such an approach allows a more complex understanding of his critical-philosophical program to emerge, which includes his accounts of reason, politics and freedom as well as subjectivity and intersubjectivity, or sociabilities. Examining Kant’s theorisation of the complexity of our phenomenological existence, the author explores his transcendental move that includes reason and understanding whilst emphasising the importance of the faculty of the imagination to undergird both, before moving to consider Kant’s pluralised, transcendental notion of freedom. This outstanding book will appeal to scholars with interests in philosophy, politics, anthropology and sociology, working on questions of imagination, reason, subjectivities and human freedom.

A comprehensive account of Kant's theory of freedom and his moral anthropology.

This collection of essays is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to Kant's lectures on anthropology and their philosophical importance.

In this book Jane Kneller focuses on the role of imagination as a creative power in Kant's aesthetics and in his overall philosophical enterprise. She analyzes Kant's account of imaginative freedom and the relation between imaginative free play and human social and moral development, showing various ways in which his aesthetics of disinterested reflection produce moral interests. She situates these aspects of his aesthetic theory within the context of German aesthetics of the eighteenth century, arguing that Kant's contribution is a bridge between early theories of aesthetic moral education and the early Romanticism of the last decade of that century. In so doing, her book brings the two most important German philosophers of Enlightenment and Romanticism, Kant and Novalis, into dialogue. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both Kant studies and German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The essays in this volume provide new readings of Kant’s account of human nature. Despite the relevance of human nature to Kant’s philosophy, little attention has been paid to the fact that the question about human nature originally pertains to pure reason. The chapters in this volume show that Kant’s point is not to state once and for all what the human being actually is, but to unite pure reason’s efforts within a unitary teleological perspective. The question about human nature is the cornerstone of reason’s unity in its different activities and domains. Kant’s question about human nature goes beyond our empirical inquiries to show that the notion of humanity represents the point of convergence and unity of pure reason’s most fundamental interests. Kant on Freedom and Human Nature will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Kant’s philosophy.

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View essentially reflects the last lectures Kant gave for his annual course in anthropology, which he taught from 1772 until his retirement in 1796. The lectures were published in 1798, with the largest first printing of any of Kant's works. Intended for a broad audience, they reveal not only Kant's unique contribution to the newly emerging discipline of anthropology, but also his desire to offer students a practical view of the world and of humanity's place in it. With its focus on what the human being 'as a free-acting being makes of himself or can and should make of himself,' the Anthropology also offers readers an application of some central elements of Kant's philosophy. This volume offers an annotated translation of the text by Robert B. Louden, together with an introduction by Manfred Kuehn that explores the context and themes of the lectures.

In a footnote to the Preface of his A nthropology Kant gives, if not altogether accurately, the historical background for the publication of this work. The A nthropology is, in effect, his manual for a course of lectures which he gave "for some thirty years," in the winter semesters at the University of Konigsberg. In 1797, when old age forced him to discontinue the course and he felt that his manual would not compete with the lectures themselves, he decided to let the work be published (Ak. VII, 354, 356). The reader will readily see why these lectures were, as Kant says, popular ones, attended by people from other walks of life. In both content and style the Anthropology is far removed from the rigors of the Critiques. Yet the Anthropology presents its own special problems. The student of Kant who struggles through the Critique of Pure Reason is undoubtedly left in some perplexity regarding specific points in it, but he is quite clear as to what Kant is attempting to do in the work. On finishing the Anthropology he may well find himself in just the opposite situation. While its discussions of the functioning of man's various powers are, on the whole, quite lucid and even entertaining, the purpose of the work remains somewhat vague. The questions: what is pragmatic anthropology? what is its relation to Kant's more strictly philosophical works? have not been answered satisfactorily.

Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are two broad approaches adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.