Kant's system of nature and freedom : selected essays / Paul Guyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guyer, Paul, 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.

Kant, Immanuel.

Ethics.

Natural history--Philosophy.

Natural history.

Physical Description:

vi, 384 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.

Summary:

The concept of systematicity is central to Immanuel Kant's conception of scientific knowledge and to his practical philosophy. But Kant also held that we must be able to unite the separate systems of nature and freedom into a single system: on the one hand, morality itself requires that we be able to see its commands and goals as realizable within nature, while on the other hand our experience of nature itself leads us to see it as a system with the goal of human moral development. The essays in this volume, including two published here for the first time, explore various aspects of Kant's conception of the system of nature, the system of freedom, and the system of nature and freedom.

The essays in the first part explore the systematicity of concepts and laws as the ultimate goal of natural science, consider the implications of Kant's account of our experience of organisms for the goal of the unity of science, and examine Kant's attempts to prove that the existence of an ether is a necessary condition for a physical system of nature. The essays in the second part explore Kant's view that morality requires a systematic union of persons as ends in themselves and of the ends that persons set for themselves, and examine the system of duties and obligations necessary to realize such a systematic union of persons and their ends. These essays thus examine both the general foundations of Kant's moral philosophy and his final account of the duties of right or justice and of ethics or virtue in his late work, the Metaphysics of Morals. The essays in the third part examine Kant's attempt, in the last of his three great critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment, to unify the systems of nature and freedom through a radical transformation of traditional teleology as a theory of the creation of organic nature into an account of our experience of organic nature and of nature as a whole.

Also featuring a helpful new introduction to orient the reader, Kant's System of Nature and Freedom will be of great interest to anyone working on the history of modern philosophy and related areas of ethics, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

Contents:

Part I The System of Nature 9

1 Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity 11

2 Kant's Conception of Empirical Law 38

3 Kant on the Systematicity of Nature: Two Puzzles 56

4 Kant's Ether Deduction and the Possibility of Experience 74

5 Organisms and the Unity of Science 86

Part II The System of Freedom 113

6 Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy 115

7 The Form and Matter of the Categorical Imperative 146

8 Ends of Reason and Ends of Nature: The Place of Teleology in Kant's Ethics 169

9 Kant's Deductions of the Principles of Right 198

10 Kant's System of Duties 243

Part III The System of Nature and Freedom 275

11 The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy 277

12 From Nature to Morality: Kant's New Argument in the 'Critique of Teleological Judgment' 314

13 Purpose in Nature: What is Living and What is Dead in Kant's Teleology? 343.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [373]-378) and index.

ISBN:

0199273464

0199273472

9780199273478

OCLC:

60512068