Kant essay

Kant essay

Kant further explains that the immature person is this way because he lets others choose for him and becomes dependent on the instructions from others. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism. Allison's response to Van Cleve in Allisonkant essay, Kant essay know where to start? I answer that this is altogether impossible. By parity of reasoning, transcendental idealism is not a specific ontological thesis e.

Kant's Moral Philosophy: A Brief Overview

Few people have had more impact on how Anglo-American philosophers read Kant than Henry Allison. Starting with a series of articles in the s and 80s on transcendental idealism, followed by his massively influential Kant's Transcendental Idealism: Kant essay Interpretation and DefenseAllison has revolutionized how many philosophers understand Kant's distinction between appearances and the 'thing in itself. In Allison published a significantly revised second edition of Kant's Transcendental Idealismdeepening and modifying his original interpretation and replying to his various critics. In addition to the books there has been a steady stream of papers in journals and edited volumes on all aspects of Kant's philosophy; it is difficult to think of a significant issue in Kant's philosophy that Allison has not written about, kant essay.

The present volume, containing seventeen previously published essays, is divided into four parts. The essays of the first part concerns Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism, in particular, the innovations in his interpretation that appear in the edition of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, kant essay. The second part contains essays on Kant's moral philosophy: three essays on freedom, kant essay two on questions that arise in particular Kantian works and their consequences for larger interpretative issues Kant's claim in the Religion that we have a propensity to evil, the claim in the Groundwork that all of the different formulations of the categorical imperative are equivalent. The essays in the third part cover issues in the third Critique not dealt with in Kant's Theory of Taste : in particular, Kant's argument in the two Introductions to that work for the principle of the 'formal purposiveness' of nature kant essay, more generally, kant essay, the theory of teleology in the second half of the work, the 'Critique of teleological judgment.

The essays in each section are tightly connected: they show Allison circling around a single problem posed by Kant essay texts, either philosophical or interpretive and usually both, approaching it from different perspectives. The different parts are also linked: the reflections on Kant's distinction between 'transcendental idealism' and 'transcendental realism' in part one lead naturally to the discussion of Kant's resolution of the compatibility of necessity and freedom in part two; particularly impressive is the way that the essays in part three, on Kant's theory of teleology in the Critique of Judgmentsupport and enrich Allison's' reading of Kant's theory of history in part four. Throughout the diversity of this material, Allison sustains his characteristic clarity, seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of Kant's texts, and unified vision of Kant's Critical philosophy.

Since I cannot discuss all of these essays or the many kant essay they raise in a single review, I will instead focus on the essays in the first two parts and the over-arching theme that links them: Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism, kant essay. The first essay, "Commentary on Section Nine of the Antimony of Pure Reason" was originally written for a collaborative commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason. The two essays I want to focus on here are three and four. Essay three, "Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism," contains a very concise and helpful discussion of the relation of Kant to the rationalist tradition, in particular, kant essay two rationalist doctrines: that in every true judgment the predicate is 'contained' in the subject, and that the content of sensible representation is reducible to the content of conceptual representation.

Readers will quickly note the Leibnizian provenance of these doctrines, and Allison does not always make it as clear as he could that by "dogmas of rationalism" he means dogmas of Leibniz's rationalism in particular. Allison also exaggerates the extent of the connection between these Leibnizian 'dogmas,' even going so far as to assert at one point that they mutually entail one another p. But while they may mutually support one another, the claim of entailment is surely incorrect. One can hold what Kant would express by saying that all true judgments are analytic, while nonetheless maintaining that the contents of sense perception are irreducible to conceptual contents, kant essay.

For instance, one can hold a direct realist theory of perception on which its contents are simply the objects themselves. True judgments are made about an object by subsuming it under a concept and then unpacking that concept so all true judgments are analytic, kant essay. In the other direction, that the contents kant essay sense perception are conceptual contents does not entail that all judgments are analytic; if kant essay does, kant essay, someone should kant essay John McDowell. For our purposes the most interesting aspect of essay three is the final section in which Allison introduces one of the main kant essay of essay four: that transcendental realism and transcendental idealism are not specific ontological kant essay about space, kant essay, time, and appearances, kant essay, but very broad methodological or 'meta-philosophical' views about the nature of human cognition and the project of epistemology, kant essay.

Allison's key kant essay here, kant essay, as in essay four, "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism," is that Kant treats transcendental idealism and transcendental realism as mutually exclusive and kant essay philosophical options. Consequently, Allison argues, transcendental realism must be understood, not as some specific ontological thesis about the nature of space, time, kant essay, or appearances e. By parity of reasoning, transcendental idealism is not a specific ontological thesis e. A plausible case can be made that Kant uses the terms 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' in such a way that they are intended to exhaust logical space, kant essay, but I think Allison is wrong in his characterization of them as 'meta-philosophical' stances, and in his identification of their specific content, kant essay.

Let us start with the point on which he is on the most solid ground: the alleged exhaustiveness of 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism,' as Kant uses these terms. We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i, kant essay. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism, kant essay. The realist, in the transcendental signification, makes these modifications of our sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes mere representations into things in themselves, kant essay.

Allison writes, "As Kant here describes these two forms of transcendentalism, kant essay, they appear to encompass the entire philosophical landscape" p. But that is precisely not how things appear in this passage, kant essay. Transcendental realism asserts, and transcendental idealism denies, that objects in space henceforth, 'objects' have "outside our thoughts [ Gedanken ] an existence grounded in itself, kant essay. The case for Allison's Exhaustiveness Thesis is improved somewhat when we look at the next paragraph:, kant essay. One would do us an injustice if one tried to ascribe to us that long-decried kant essay idealism that, kant essay, while assuming the proper reality of space, denies the existence of extended beings in it, or at least finds this existence doubtful, and so in this respect admits no satisfactorily provable distinction between dream and truth.

If the Exhaustiveness Thesis is true, kant essay, then empirical idealism must be a kind of transcendental realism since Kant has just told us that it is not a kind of transcendental idealism. Now, while it might initially seem counter-intuitive kant essay "denying or finding doubtful" the existence of objects empirical idealism is compatible with claiming that they have an existence "grounded in themselves" transcendental realismthere is something on which both positions agree: what it would be for objects to exist, whether or not they do exist. The transcendental realist and the empirical idealist, on this reading, kant essay, agree on what it takes for objects to exist: kant essay must exist 'in themselves' where this means their existence is not grounded in facts about our experience or sensibility.

This picture of their relation is suggested by Kant's remarks elsewhere that "it is really this transcendental realist who afterwards plays kant essay empirical idealist" A and "as far as I know all those psychologists who cling to empirical idealism are transcendental realists" A The more important question, kant essay, though, is whether the Exhaustiveness Thesis that transcendental realism, so understood, and transcendental idealism exhaust logical space plays any significant role in any Kantian argument, to which I think the answer is 'no, kant essay. This raises two puzzles: i why is transcendental realism committed to the Thesis and the Antithesis of each Antinomy? First, I just want to point out that if 'transcendental realism' means what Allison thinks it does, then i is clearly false.

A thoroughgoing empirical idealist who is a transcendental realist, on Allison's understanding who denies that there is space or time or objects in space they are all illusions is committed neither to the Thesis space and time are bounded nor the Antithesis space and time are unbounded of the first Antinomy. But if this is correct, then 'transcendental realism' in the Antinomies kant essay something more specific than what Allison means by that term, which means that the Exhaustiveness Thesis, as formulated by Allison, does not play a role in Kant's "indirect" proof of transcendental idealism.

This removes a key piece of support for Allison's claim that 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' are understood so broadly by Kant that they exhaust logical space. In the remainder of this section I will object to his identification of what these philosophical views in fact are. In essay four, Allison claims that transcendental realism is the thesis that "spatiotemporal predicates are kant essay to things in general" pp. This, kant essay, however, has some problematic consequences. It entail that, for instance, kant essay, Platonism is not a form of transcendental realism, which, together with Allison's Exclusivity Thesis, kant essay, would entail that Platonism is a form of transcendental idealism. In "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism" Allison begins by characterizing transcendental idealism as the negation of transcendental realism since he is assuming the Exhaustiveness Thesisso its content is: spatiotemporal predicates do not apply to all things in general.

However, it does not follow that the transcendental idealist denies that things in themselves are spatiotemporal. By denying that spatiotemporal predicates apply to all things in general, kant essay, the transcendental idealist is not committed to denying that they apply to one species of or way of conceptualizing things: things in themselves, kant essay. So Allison's own characterization of transcendental idealism in this essay fails to explain why it entails non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves, despite Kant's characterization of it in precisely those terms at A Allison tries to remedy this gap in his argument by giving an independent argument that things in themselves are not spatiotemporal: "inasmuch as the concept of a thing in itself contains the thought of something as it is in itself, independently of any sensible intuition, kant essay, it requires an active factoring out or exclusion of any contribution of sensibility rather than merely a refusal or failure to factor it in" p.

This interpretation, developed more fully in Allisonrepudiates an alternative model that some have attributed to him e. On the alternative model, kant essay, talk of things in themselves is merely a way of talking about objects of a discursive intellect in general, whether or not they are given in spatiotemporal intuition:. James Van Cleve and others objected to this model which they took to be Allison's that it licenses only the conclusion that it is not the case that things kant essay themselves are determinately spatiotemporal, not Kant's own conclusions: things in kant essay are determinately not spatiotemporal. The quoted passage contains Allison's response to this objections; he rejects i in favor of:.

This entails that 'things in themselves are not in space and time' is a direct consequence of the definition of 'things in themselves' talk; a foundational claim of Kant's epistemology is rendered analytic. Allison's response kant essay that the substantive synthetic a priori claim is that there are sensible conditions on our cognition, and they are space and kant essay. So while the judgment 'things in themselves are not in space and time' may be a direct consequence of iiii would be false unless there were sensible conditions on cognition. We cannot know that things kant essay themselves are non-spatiotemporal without knowing a synthetic a priori judgment that space and time are sensible conditions on our cognitionso this claim is saved from being analytic, kant essay.

Finally, Allison offers a third, kant essay, distinct characterization of transcendental idealism, one that plays an important role in his account of the resolution of the Third Antinomy and is prominently featured in Allison On this reading, kant essay, transcendental idealism is the meta-philosophical or meta-cognitive thesis that there is no 'way the world is' independently of a perspective or standpoint on it. Consequently, the theoretical standpoint in which we represent objects using space and time and categories and the practical standpoint in which we represent ourselves as freely acting rational agents are not 'in competition. The problem with this 'internal realist' reading of transcendental idealism [6] is that it offers no room for one of Kant's most characteristic claims about the relation between the empirical world the world as revealed from the theoretical standpoint and the 'intelligible' world kant essay world as revealed from the practical standpoint : that the intelligible world is the ground of the empirical world, kant essay.

But, as metaphysical interpreters of transcendental idealism have long pointed out, there are at least two notions of reality at play here and two ways in which noumena might be said to be more real than phenomena:, kant essay. From Erich Adickes to Karl Ameriks to Richard Aquila, metaphysical interpreters have pointed out that the answer to the first question is 'no' while the answer to the second question is 'yes. Allison owes us an explanation of why, on his reading, kant essay are not the grounds of things kant essay themselves. The second group of essays concern Kant's moral philosophy and, with the exception of essays six and eight, specifically, Kant's theory kant essay freedom, kant essay.

Essay six, kant essay, "On the Very Kant essay of a Propensity to Evil," treats an especially difficult interpretive puzzle in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone : what does Kant mean by attributing to human beings an 'innate propensity to evil' and what grounds does he kant essay for doing so? Essay eight is about Kant's claim in the Groundwork that the various formulations of the kant essay imperative e. The other essays in this section deal with a connected set of issues in, roughly, Groundwork IIIkant essay, the Critique of Practical Reasonkant essay, and the resolution of the third Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason.

The jumping-off point in several essays is Kant's claim in Groundwork III that: "to every rational being having a will we must necessarily lend the idea of freedom also, under which he acts" Kant states the point in the third-person, but it is perhaps easiest to appreciate in the kant essay case: when I act I presuppose that I am free from determination by my sensible desires, inclinations, kant essay, etc. If we extend this point to other rational agents we get: the idea of another person as a practically rational agent involves representing her as free from determination by desires, kant essay, inclinations, previous intentions, etc.

We and she herself! must represent her as able to act for reasons because she has endorsed those reasons incorporated them into her maximnot because they causally determine her to act. One might wonder what exactly 'freedom' means here, kant essay, and I take it that, on Allison's interpretation, it requires at least: the capacity to i act for reasons, ii because one has endorsed those reasons incorporated them into the maxim of one's actionkant essay, where the activation of this capacity is iii contra-causal one's actions are not causally determined by the past, given the laws of nature.

The interpretive difficulty kant essay understanding what part this presupposition of freedom plays in Kant's argument that we in fact possess this kind of freedom. After all, even a hard determinist might admit that practical reasoning constitutively involves the illusion of contra-causal freedom. This problem becomes especially acute when we recall that Kant has already argued in the Second Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason that every alteration in the empirical world has a sufficient and determining cause. As Allison reads Groundwork IIIKant's resolution of this problem consists in distinguishing two 'standpoints' from which we can view our actions: we can view them from the 'theoretical' standpoint as events like any others in the empirical world, or we can view them from the 'practical standpoint' in which we think of them as moves in a kant essay of reasons' that are normatively evaluable and therefore contra-causally free.

This transforms the conflict of the presupposition of freedom with the fact of casual determination into a question about the potential conflict between the 'practical standpoint' and the 'theoretical standpoint': which if either accurately represents the way things are? Am I in fact free from causal determination when I act? Or are all of my actions in fact part of a deterministic causal nexus, kant essay, while I am subject to the persistent illusion that I am free? This is where Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism as a 'meta-philosophical' doctrine becomes relevant see kant essay section. While, in the first set of essays, Allison characterized transcendental idealism in several distinct ways, in the context of the freedom-determination problem his main characterization is the 'meta-philosophical' or 'internal kant essay one: there is no 'way things are' independent of a standpoint a structured set of norms for making claims about thingsso the question of which standpoint theoretical or practical is 'right' is incoherent.

The apparent conflict between freedom and determination is revealed to rest on the mistaken assumption that I must be either free or determined periodkant essay, while in fact I can correctly be judged to be free and undetermined from one perspective the practical and can correctly be judged to be determined and unfree from another the theoretical. This, in essence, kant essay, kant essay Allison's reconstruction of Kant's resolution to the Third Antinomy, discussed in the first essay of the collection, tying together the themes of the first half of the book: transcendental idealism and freedom. Lest this seem like warmed-over relativism, Allison argues that these standpoints each have a privileged status: one of them is constitutive for beings with our kinds of intellect of reasoning about given objects, while the other is constitutive of reasoning about how to act.

So the practical standpoint is not some arbitrarily invented way of representing myself, kant essay, cooked-up solely for the sake of vindicating my freedom. Taking the practical standpoint on oneself is constitutive of being a practically rational agent. Consequently, the presupposition of my freedom is warranted within the practical standpoint in virtue of being a central component of my representation of myself as a practically rational agent. Assuming that the practical standpoint is itself internally kant essay in Kantian terms, that practical reason is consistent with itselfthe only challenge to claims warranted within the practical standpoint is the putative contradiction between that standpoint and the theoretical standpoint.

If Kant can show that this putative conflict is based on a fallacy that there is no truth independent of standpoints then he will have gone a long way to showing that freedom and necessity are compatible. I think this view has a lot going for it. In particular, I find it more plausible kant essay some other contemporary forms of compatibilism.

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True judgments are made about an object by subsuming it under a concept and then unpacking that concept so all true judgments are analytic. In the other direction, that the contents of sense perception are conceptual contents does not entail that all judgments are analytic; if it does, someone should alert John McDowell. For our purposes the most interesting aspect of essay three is the final section in which Allison introduces one of the main themes of essay four: that transcendental realism and transcendental idealism are not specific ontological theses about space, time, and appearances, but very broad methodological or 'meta-philosophical' views about the nature of human cognition and the project of epistemology.

Allison's key argument here, as in essay four, "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism," is that Kant treats transcendental idealism and transcendental realism as mutually exclusive and exhaustive philosophical options. Consequently, Allison argues, transcendental realism must be understood, not as some specific ontological thesis about the nature of space, time, or appearances e. By parity of reasoning, transcendental idealism is not a specific ontological thesis e. A plausible case can be made that Kant uses the terms 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' in such a way that they are intended to exhaust logical space, but I think Allison is wrong in his characterization of them as 'meta-philosophical' stances, and in his identification of their specific content.

Let us start with the point on which he is on the most solid ground: the alleged exhaustiveness of 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism,' as Kant uses these terms. We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism. The realist, in the transcendental signification, makes these modifications of our sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes mere representations into things in themselves. Allison writes, "As Kant here describes these two forms of transcendentalism, they appear to encompass the entire philosophical landscape" p.

But that is precisely not how things appear in this passage. Transcendental realism asserts, and transcendental idealism denies, that objects in space henceforth, 'objects' have "outside our thoughts [ Gedanken ] an existence grounded in itself. The case for Allison's Exhaustiveness Thesis is improved somewhat when we look at the next paragraph:. One would do us an injustice if one tried to ascribe to us that long-decried empirical idealism that, while assuming the proper reality of space, denies the existence of extended beings in it, or at least finds this existence doubtful, and so in this respect admits no satisfactorily provable distinction between dream and truth.

If the Exhaustiveness Thesis is true, then empirical idealism must be a kind of transcendental realism since Kant has just told us that it is not a kind of transcendental idealism. Now, while it might initially seem counter-intuitive that "denying or finding doubtful" the existence of objects empirical idealism is compatible with claiming that they have an existence "grounded in themselves" transcendental realism , there is something on which both positions agree: what it would be for objects to exist, whether or not they do exist. The transcendental realist and the empirical idealist, on this reading, agree on what it takes for objects to exist: they must exist 'in themselves' where this means their existence is not grounded in facts about our experience or sensibility.

This picture of their relation is suggested by Kant's remarks elsewhere that "it is really this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the empirical idealist" A and "as far as I know all those psychologists who cling to empirical idealism are transcendental realists" A The more important question, though, is whether the Exhaustiveness Thesis that transcendental realism, so understood, and transcendental idealism exhaust logical space plays any significant role in any Kantian argument, to which I think the answer is 'no. This raises two puzzles: i why is transcendental realism committed to the Thesis and the Antithesis of each Antinomy?

First, I just want to point out that if 'transcendental realism' means what Allison thinks it does, then i is clearly false. A thoroughgoing empirical idealist who is a transcendental realist, on Allison's understanding who denies that there is space or time or objects in space they are all illusions is committed neither to the Thesis space and time are bounded nor the Antithesis space and time are unbounded of the first Antinomy. But if this is correct, then 'transcendental realism' in the Antinomies means something more specific than what Allison means by that term, which means that the Exhaustiveness Thesis, as formulated by Allison, does not play a role in Kant's "indirect" proof of transcendental idealism. This removes a key piece of support for Allison's claim that 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' are understood so broadly by Kant that they exhaust logical space.

In the remainder of this section I will object to his identification of what these philosophical views in fact are. In essay four, Allison claims that transcendental realism is the thesis that "spatiotemporal predicates are applicable to things in general" pp. This, however, has some problematic consequences. It entail that, for instance, Platonism is not a form of transcendental realism, which, together with Allison's Exclusivity Thesis, would entail that Platonism is a form of transcendental idealism. In "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism" Allison begins by characterizing transcendental idealism as the negation of transcendental realism since he is assuming the Exhaustiveness Thesis , so its content is: spatiotemporal predicates do not apply to all things in general.

However, it does not follow that the transcendental idealist denies that things in themselves are spatiotemporal. By denying that spatiotemporal predicates apply to all things in general, the transcendental idealist is not committed to denying that they apply to one species of or way of conceptualizing things: things in themselves. So Allison's own characterization of transcendental idealism in this essay fails to explain why it entails non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves, despite Kant's characterization of it in precisely those terms at A Allison tries to remedy this gap in his argument by giving an independent argument that things in themselves are not spatiotemporal: "inasmuch as the concept of a thing in itself contains the thought of something as it is in itself, independently of any sensible intuition, it requires an active factoring out or exclusion of any contribution of sensibility rather than merely a refusal or failure to factor it in" p.

This interpretation, developed more fully in Allison , repudiates an alternative model that some have attributed to him e. On the alternative model, talk of things in themselves is merely a way of talking about objects of a discursive intellect in general, whether or not they are given in spatiotemporal intuition:. James Van Cleve and others objected to this model which they took to be Allison's that it licenses only the conclusion that it is not the case that things in themselves are determinately spatiotemporal, not Kant's own conclusions: things in themselves are determinately not spatiotemporal.

The quoted passage contains Allison's response to this objections; he rejects i in favor of:. This entails that 'things in themselves are not in space and time' is a direct consequence of the definition of 'things in themselves' talk; a foundational claim of Kant's epistemology is rendered analytic. Allison's response is that the substantive synthetic a priori claim is that there are sensible conditions on our cognition, and they are space and time. So while the judgment 'things in themselves are not in space and time' may be a direct consequence of ii , ii would be false unless there were sensible conditions on cognition.

We cannot know that things in themselves are non-spatiotemporal without knowing a synthetic a priori judgment that space and time are sensible conditions on our cognition , so this claim is saved from being analytic. Finally, Allison offers a third, distinct characterization of transcendental idealism, one that plays an important role in his account of the resolution of the Third Antinomy and is prominently featured in Allison On this reading, transcendental idealism is the meta-philosophical or meta-cognitive thesis that there is no 'way the world is' independently of a perspective or standpoint on it.

Consequently, the theoretical standpoint in which we represent objects using space and time and categories and the practical standpoint in which we represent ourselves as freely acting rational agents are not 'in competition. The problem with this 'internal realist' reading of transcendental idealism [6] is that it offers no room for one of Kant's most characteristic claims about the relation between the empirical world the world as revealed from the theoretical standpoint and the 'intelligible' world the world as revealed from the practical standpoint : that the intelligible world is the ground of the empirical world. But, as metaphysical interpreters of transcendental idealism have long pointed out, there are at least two notions of reality at play here and two ways in which noumena might be said to be more real than phenomena:.

Power, riches, honor, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle of acting and adapt it to its end. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness. There are even some qualities which are of service to this good will itself and may facilitate its action, yet which have no intrinsic unconditional value, but always presuppose a good will, and this qualifies the esteem that we justly have for them and does not permit us to regard them as absolutely good.

Moderation in the affections and passions, self-control, and calm deliberation are not only good in many respects, but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of the person; but they are far from deserving to be called good without qualification, although they have been so unconditionally praised by the ancients. For without the principles of a good will, they may become extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain not only makes him far more dangerous, but also directly makes him more abominable in our eyes than he would have been without it. A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations.

Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavor of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power , then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself. Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add nor take away anything from this value. It would be, as it were, only the setting to enable us to handle it the more conveniently in common commerce, or to attract to it the attention of those who are not yet connoisseurs, but not to recommend it to true connoisseurs, or to determine its value.

There is, however, something so strange in this idea of the absolute value of the mere will, in which no account is taken of its utility, that notwithstanding the thorough assent of even common reason to the idea, yet a suspicion must arise that it may perhaps really be the product of mere high-flown fancy, and that we may have misunderstood the purpose of nature in assigning reason as the governor of our will. Therefore we will examine this idea from this point of view. In this passage, Kant seems to support a Principle of Control for moral responsibility. The Principle of Control holds that you cannot get either moral credit or moral blame for what is outside your control. If you are a well-functioning, autonomous person you can control your decisions about which rules to follow.

But none of us have complete control over the consequences of our actions, since there is always some element of luck involved in whether we achieve our plans. Example 1: Suppose you decide to help out your sick friend by bringing her aspirin. Unbeknownst to you, the medicine has gone bad and is not poisonous. Your friend gets more ill. A defender of the Principle of Control would argue you are not responsible for making your friend sicker, since you could not have known or controlled the outcome. You are just responsible for a good deed--namely, the will to help your friend.

Example 2: Suppose Alex and Bea both have several drinks at a bar one night and decide to drive home. Alex loses control of his car an ends up killing another driver. Bea arrives home safely. By the Principle of Control, both are equally morally blameworthy for their decision to drive drunk. Bea does not get "off the hook" just because she was lucky enough to not harm another person. He draws a distinction between persons and mere things. Beings whose existence depends, not on our will, but on nature, have nonetheless, if they are non-rational beings, only a relative value as means and are consequently called things. Rational beings, on the other hand, are called persons because their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves—that is, as something which ought not to be used merely as a meansand consequently imposes to that extent a limit on all arbitrary treatment of them and is an object of reverence.

Persons, therefore, are not merely subjective ends whose existence as an effect of our actions has a value for us: they are objective ends—that is, things whose existence is in itself an end, and indeed an end such that in its place we can put no other end to which they should serve simply as a means. What is it to treat a person as a mere means? For Kant, persons deserve reasons for how they are being treated. When we are interacting with persons, we have to respect the fact that they have rational plans and are capable of their own decision-making. MERE THINGS: For Kant, a mere thing is anything that is not a person -- not a being capable of rational autonomy.

Mere things can be used as a mere means by rational agents. For example, I can use a mere shovel to dig a hole. I can use mere animals as sources of food. PERSONS: For Kant, a person is an autonomous rational being -- someone capable of deciding which rules to follow, which plans to make for the future, and capable of realizing what their moral obligations are. Someone can be a human organism and not a person. For instance, someone in a permanent coma will not be a person in Kant's sense. Kant thinks persons are "ends in themselves" -- sources of value that demand to be respected by other rational beings. We have then to develop the notion of a will which deserves to be highly esteemed for itself and is good without a view to anything further, a notion which exists already in the sound natural understanding, requiring rather to be cleared up than to be taught, and which in estimating the value of our actions always takes the first place and constitutes the condition of all the rest.

In order to do this, we will take the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will, although implying certain subjective restrictions and hindrances. These, however, far from concealing it, or rendering it unrecognizable, rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine forth so much the brighter. I omit here all actions which are already recognized as inconsistent with duty, although they may be useful for this or that purpose, for with these the question whether they are done from duty cannot arise at all, since they even conflict with it. I also set aside those actions which really conform to duty, but to which men have no direct inclination, performing them because they are impelled thereto by some other inclination.

For in this case we can readily distinguish whether the action which agrees with duty is done from duty, or from a selfish view. It is much harder to make this distinction when the action accords with duty and the subject has besides a direct inclination to it. Kant continues by offering examples of good motivations. You cannot be motivated purely by self-interest to do what is morally right:. Philosophical Movements , Philosophers. Enlightenment , Immanuel Kant. In his essay, Kant basically replied to a question that was asked in by Reverand Johann Zollner. Reverand Johann Zollner was a government official who posed an open question to all about the removal of clergy from marriages.

Many people replied, but the most famous response came from Kant. Immaturity is define as the state of being immature or not fully grown. In essence, Kant is saying that we are not grown enough to think for ourselves. Instead, we accept whatever we are fed. Kant further explains that the immature person is this way because he lets others choose for him and becomes dependent on the instructions from others. Because the minor is so dependent, it is much harder for them to act and think on their own.

Kant believes that man is incapable of using his own understanding because no one has ever allowed him to challenge it. All our lives we have been told what to do, and what to believe, and we are expected not to question why things are the way they are. The pastor tell us do not ask questions, believe. The tax man tell us do not ask questions, pay. The officer tells us do not ask questions, drill. Our whole lives are basically dictated to us and we do not use our reason to oppose what we are told. Instead, we drink the Kool-Aid. Kant tries to explain the influence of the government on its citizens by drawing an analogy using animals.

Guardian make their cattle stupid and train them not to cross certain areas without their leading-strings by making the cattle aware of the dangers that lie ahead. This makes the cattle afraid to even try and see for themselves. Likewise, the government provides its people with a set of principles and concepts that the minors immediately agree with, which furthers their immaturity. According to Kant it is extremely difficult for a man to reach maturity alone but it is easy for a group of people to do it together. When a person starts depending on others for guidance, he finds it difficult to break out of that pattern and start thinking on his own.

Any mistake he makes will highlight the faults in is way of thinking. A person must possess fearlessness and vigor in order to leave immaturity. Kant was us to dare to know, sapere arde. To emerge from our self-inflicted immaturity we must utilize our reason, practice critical thinking, and manifest curiosity.