Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley, eds. , Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide . Reviewed by (original) (raw)
2014, Philosophy in review
AI-generated Abstract
This critical guide explores the significance of Kant's early works, specifically the *Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime* and the accompanying *Remarks*. It highlights a shift in Kantian scholarship that recognizes the relevance of these texts to contemporary discussions on ethics, aesthetics, politics, and human rights, while examining how Kant's engagement with figures like Rousseau influences his thoughts on moral worth and social inequalities.
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As has been noted in the recent literature on Kant's ethics, Kant holds that although natural drives such as feelings, emotions and inclinations cannot lead directly to moral worth, they nevertheless play some kind of role vis-à-vis morality. 2 The issue is thus to understand this role within the limits set by Kant's account of freedom, and it is usually tackled by examining the relationship between moral and non-moral motivation in the Groundwork, the Critique of Practical Reason, and more recently, the Anthropology. 3 In this respect, the aim of this paper is to argue that the Observations is a peculiar work, for by contrast with later works, its focus is not on the ways in which nature helps human beings become more moral, or better moral agents, but rather on how it ensures that the human species survives and flourishes independently of its morality, and in particular despite its lack thereof. In this sense, the Observations emphasizes first that the human species can, and does, function independently of its moral worth; and second, that it is intended to function beautifully has a whole in spite of its lack of moral worth. On this basis, I will conclude that the Kant of the Observations is more akin to a Mandeville than a Rousseau -he describes the functioning of the species, spelling out its survival mechanisms through natural drives, rather than explains that and how it ought to perfect itself.
Notes on Kant's third Critique, 2015
These are notes on Kant's third Critique that I made for the participants in a reading group I organized in my final semester as an MA student at San Francisco State University. The notes only cover the first part of the book, the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment. What appears is the result of my first serious and close reading of the text as I used it for my thesis on concept-acquisition. Accordingly the document was produced with an eye toward how Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment fits into his larger theory of cognition.
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