The role of the 'plan of nature'in Kant's account of history from a philosophical … (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kant on the history of nature: The ambiguous heritage of the critical philosophy for natural history
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2006
This paper seeks to show Kant's importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon's distinctions of 'abstract' and 'physical' truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of 'varieties' from 'races' in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the 'history' of nature [Naturgeschichte] over 'description' of nature [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant's confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the 'history of nature' and gave theoretical preference to 'description of nature'. As a result, Kant's successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a 'regulative' idea of reason.
Neo-Kantianism and the Limits of Historical Explanation
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2021
This paper looks at the Neo-Kantian response to Darwinism as a historical science. I distinguish four responses to this aspect of Darwin's thought within the Neo-Kantian tradition. The first line of response, represented by August Stadler and Bruno Bauch, views Darwin's model of historical explanation as a fulfillment of Kant's criteria of scientific intelligibility. The second, represented by Otto Liebmann, regards historical explanation as intrinsically limited, because it cannot tell us why nature develops as it does. The third line of response questions whether we can give a historical account of qualitative change. Friedrich Lange expresses this skepticism in general terms, while Alois Riehl and Ernst Cassirer extend it to human beings specifically. Both deny that we can account for 'higher faculties' in terms of gradual change. A fourth line of response, represented by Heinrich Rickert, challenges the misperception that Darwin's theory tells us something about the meaning of history.
Estudos Kantianos, 2014
Abstract: This essay intends to show how Kant’s approach to history paves the way for his philosophy of history. In order to do so, I will first draw on some texts included in the transcripts of Kant’s Logic Lectures to articulate his views on history. I will then argue that Kant’s philosophy of history constitutes his particular way of making sense of the contingency proper to historical knowledge in light of the interests of reason.
Estudos Kantianos [EK], 2015
The paper argues that Kant’s teleology in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose can be salvaged only if the mechanism of social unsociability, considered as the true center of the essay, is a) detached from the ? by contemporary standards ? hardly defensible notion of ‘natural dispositions’ and b) understood in conjunction with general premises that Kant does not make explicit, but rather takes as self-evidently true. In this perspective, Kant’s teleology is reduced to the affirmationthat, given certain constant features of human beings (mainly, limited benevolence and ability to see their best interest through experience) as well as relatively constant objective circumstances of the world we live in (mainly, availability of finite yet sufficient resources and sustainable growth in a competitive yet peaceful system), an approximation of human affairs towards the ‘cosmopolitan constitution’ is the most likely outcome. The paper moves the first steps towards a defen...
EPEKEINA. International Journal of Ontology. History and Critics, 2016
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Estudos Kantianos, 2017
In his essay, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” (1784), Kant claims that the history of mankind should reflectively be understood as a process thanks to which the human race ‘as a whole’ gradually approximates its terminus ad quem, i.e., the establishment of “a moral whole” (ein moralisch Ganze). (IaG AA 8:21). In objection to the empirical standpoint adopted by historiographers’ account of natural history, Kant shows that his intention is far from elaborating a “history…written merely empirically” (IaG AA 8:30), i.e., “history which concerns itself with the narration of… appearances” (IaG AA 8:17). Noticeably, Kant is not rejecting natural history as such. He rather acknowledges the role of (human) nature in the constant approximation of the highest goal of humanity. In his endeavor to “furnish…a philosophical history” (philosophische Geschichte) (IaG AA 8:31), ‘nature’ is given credit of being a means to the continual progress of the realization of freedom in the stage of empirical history. (Cf. IaG AA 8:19; ZeF AA 8:360-368). The problem is how Kant’s criticism of “history…written merely empirically” (IaG AA 8:30) and his emphasis on the role of nature in the moral progress of humanity fit together without contradicting each other. In three steps, this paper aims at showing, based on the mediating function of the idea of moral progress, that there is no contradiction in the foregoing claims.
Natural history and variability of organized beings in Kant's philosophy
Belgrade Philosophical Annual
This paper aims to examine Kant's views on evolution of organized beings and to show that Kant's antievolutionary conclusions stem from his study of natural history and variability of organisms. Accordingly, I discuss Kant's study of natural history and consider whether his conclusion about impossibility of knowledge about such history expands on the research of history of organized beings. Moving forward, I examine the notion of variability in Kant's philosophy, and show that his theory of organized beings relies on the preformationist conception of variability that provides limited insight into the history of organisms. I explain that Kant's endorsement of preformationism is conditioned by a lack of knowledge about the mechanism that successfully explains adaptation and transmutation of organisms leading towards the creation of new species. Finally, I sumarize the following reasons for Kant's rejection of the hypothesis of evolution: lack of cognitive abili...