School
Kantianism
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Did non-Euclidean geometry sink Kant’s view of space?
I am a retired teacher in Freiburg, finally reading the Critique of Pure Reason properly, and I am stuck on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant says space is not a thing in itself and not a set of relations among things in themselves.…
Started by Henrike Vogel0 replies67 views -
What’s the difference between Kant’s “mathematical” and “dynamical” sublime?
I'm on a gap year and reading whatever I can. Last month I stood at the crater rim at Bromo before sunrise with the volcano smoking below and the sand sea all around, and I felt something I don't have a word…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies246 views -
Kant says taste is subjective but everyone ought to agree with it. How is that not a contradiction?
I drive the 413 across Ankara and listen to lectures between stops. Yesterday the lecturer explained Kant's view of beauty and I nearly missed a stop. As far as I understood: when I call something beautiful, I am not reporting a property…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies158 views -
I butcher pigs at work and my dog sleeps on my bed. Is that inconsistent?
I'm a chef from Goa, which means pork is close to the centre of the food I grew up with: sorpotel, vindaloo, chouriço. In my kitchen in Dubai I break down whole pigs when we can get them. At home I have…
Started by Joel D'Souza5 replies197 views -
Can Kant’s rule against treating others merely as means be stretched to cover animals?
I work on wetlands, and in a project meeting last month we argued about whether the birds of a lake have any claim against being drained out of their habitat, or whether only the people who enjoy them do. A colleague, a…
Started by Anand Pillai5 replies195 views -
What does Kant mean when he says laughter is an expectation turning into nothing?
I am a retired teacher reading the Critique of the Power of Judgment slowly, with a pencil, and I have reached the remark after section 54, where Kant suddenly starts telling jokes. I did not expect this from him. His formula, in…
Started by Henrike Vogel6 replies232 views -
Was Kant an idealist in the same sense as Berkeley?
I'm an accountant who reads medieval philosophy for pleasure, so the eighteenth century is a foreign country to me. A friend in my book club said, rather confidently, that Kant is "just Berkeley with extra steps": both say the world is in…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies146 views -
Reading group: Kant’s Groundwork, Section I, the good will and the honest shopkeeper
I taught ethics at a Gymnasium for many years and always skipped to the formulas of the categorical imperative. Now, retired, I want to read the beginning properly: Section I of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), where Kant starts…
Started by Henrike Vogel6 replies182 views -
The crane logs were falsified and reporting them might shut the terminal: what each theory told me
Last spring, as union delegate, I found out that maintenance records for one of the older gantry cranes at our terminal had been filled in for inspections that never happened. The crane was probably fine. The risk was small but real: a…
Started by Hugo Marchetti6 replies268 views -
Davos, 1929: was the split already visible in the room?
I live in Freiburg, Heidegger's city, and I'm reading Kant properly in retirement, so the Davos disputation of 1929 has become a small obsession. In the spring of that year, at a university course in the Swiss resort, Ernst Cassirer and Martin…
Started by Henrike Vogel6 replies248 views -
What is threshold deontology, and isn’t it just consequentialism with extra steps?
In my constitutional law seminar we discussed whether rights can ever be suspended in an emergency. I mentioned the ADM Jabalpur case from 1976, when our Supreme Court accepted that even the right to life could not be enforced during the Emergency,…
Started by Deepa Nair4 replies168 views -
Reading group: Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, the first two chapters
Jonas published Das Prinzip Verantwortung in 1979 and the English version, which he prepared with David Herr, came out in 1984 as The Imperative of Responsibility. I taught ethics for years without reading it properly, and now that I have time I…
Started by Henrike Vogel5 replies151 views -
Leibniz had the better of the argument with Clarke
I model oil reservoirs for a living, so space and what fills it is a professional concern. I've been reading the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence of 1715–16, in which Samuel Clarke defended Newton's absolute space and Leibniz argued that space is only the order…
Started by Abdulrahman Al-Qahtani5 replies244 views -
Ross was right: there is no master principle of morality, only several duties weighed by judgement
For thirty-one years I sat as a judge, the last ten as a sessions judge. Every sentence I passed involved weighing things that do not reduce to one another: the harm done, the offender's history, his family, remorse, deterrence, mercy. There was…
Started by Khalid Mahmood Awan6 replies320 views -
Reading group: Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic (1884), five weeks with Austin’s translation
Frege's Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) is short, sharp and still the best place to see why someone would think numbers are objects. J. L. Austin's translation (1950) has German and English on facing pages, which helps if anyone reads German. I…
Started by Ana Clara Ferreira6 replies262 views -
Christine Korsgaard
Christine Korsgaard is an American philosopher who taught for many years at Harvard and is one of the leading contemporary interpreters and developers of…