Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

by Kant, Immanuel; Dowdell, Victor Lyle; Rudnick, Hans H.

• ISBN13: 9780809320608
• ISBN10: 0809320606
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-09-01
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

In the fall semester of 1772/73 at the Albertus University of Konigsberg, Immanuel Kant, metaphysician and professor of logic and metaphysics, began lectures on anthropology, which he continued until 1776, shortly before his retirement from public life. His lecture notes and papers were first published in 1798, eight years after the publication of theCritique of Judgment,the third of his famousCritiques.The present edition of theAnthropologyis a translation of the text found in volume 7 ofKants gesammelte Schriften,edited by Oswald Kulpe.Kant describes theAnthropologyas a systematic doctrine of the knowledge of humankind. (He does not yet distinguish between the academic discipline of anthropology as we understand it today and the philosophical.) Kant's lectures stressed the "pragmatic" approach to the subject because he intended to establish pragmatic anthropology as a regular academic discipline. He differentiates the physiological knowledge of the human race--the investigation of "what Nature makes of man"--from the pragmatic--"what man as a free being makes of himself, what he can make of himself, and what he ought to make of himself." Kant believed that anthropology teaches the knowledge of humankind and makes us familiar with what is pragmatic, not speculative, in relation to humanity. He shows us as world citizens within the context of the cosmos.Summarizing the cloth edition of theAnthropology, Library Journalconcludes: "Kant's allusions to such issues as sensation, imagination, judgment, (aesthetic) taste, emotion, passion, moral character, and the character of the human species in regard to the ideal of a cosmopolitan society make this work an important resource for English readers who seek to grasp the connections among Kant's metaphysics of nature, metaphysics of morals, and political theory. The notes of the editor and translator, which incorporate material from Ernst Cassirer's edition and from Kant'smarginaliain the original manuscript, shed considerable light on the text."

Author Biography

Victor L. Dowdell was an instructor in classics at Nashotah House, Wisconsin, and a dean and professor of Greek at St. Michael’s Seminary, Puerto Rico.

Hans H. Rudnick is a professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Introduction	p. 3
Anthropological Didactic
On Being Conscious of One's Self	p. 9
On Egoism	p. 10
On Being Arbitrarily Conscious of One's Ideas	p. 14
On Self-Observation	p. 15
On the Ideas We Have without Being Aware of Them	p. 18
On Distinctness and Indistinctness in Relation to the Consciousness of One's Ideas	p. 21
On Sensibility in Contrast to Understanding	p. 24
Apology for Sensibility	p. 28
On the Potentiality of the Cognitive Faculty	p. 32
On the Artificial Games Played with Sensory Perceptions	p. 35
On the Admissible Moral Perception	p. 37
On the Five Senses	p. 40
On the Inner Sense	p. 49
On the Causes of Increasing or Decreasing Sensory Perceptions According to Degree	p. 50
On the Decreasing, Weakening, and Entire Loss of the Faculty of the Senses	p. 54
On the Sensory Productive Faculty with All Its Branches	p. 64
Of the Faculty of Visualizing the Past and the Future by means of the Imagination	p. 73
On Involuntary Invention in a Sound Mental State, that is, on Dreams	p. 81
On the Faculty of Designation (facultas signatrix)	p. 83
On the Faculty of Cognition as Far as It Is Based on Understanding	p. 90
Anthropological Comparison of the Three Higher Cognitive Faculties with Each Other	p. 91
On the Soul's Weaknesses and Illnesses with Respect to Its Cognitive Faculty	p. 97
On the Talents of the Cognitive Faculty	p. 118
On the Specific Differences between the Comparative and the Argumentative Intelligence	p. 119
On Sensuous Pleasure	p. 130
On Emotion in Contrast to Passion	p. 156
On the Emotions in Particular	p. 158
On Passions	p. 172
On the Highest Physical Good	p. 184
On the Highest Ethicophysical Good	p. 185
Anthropological Characterization
The Character of the Person	p. 195
The Character of the Sexes	p. 216
The Character of Nations	p. 225
On the Character of Races	p. 236
On the Character of the Species	p. 237
Notes	p. 255
Index	p. 291
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