Kant's System of Nature and Freedom Selected Essays

by Guyer, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780199273461
• ISBN10: 0199273464
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

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.

Author Biography

Paul Guyer is Professor of Philosophy and Florence R. C. Murray Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	vii
Introduction	1	(8)
PART I. The System of Nature	9	(104)
Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity	11	(27)
Kant's Conception of Empirical Law	38	(18)
Kant on the Systematicity of Nature: Two Puzzles	56	(18)
Kant's Ether Deduction and the Possibility of Experience	74	(12)
Organisms and the Unity of Science	86	(27)
PART II. The System of Freedom	113	(162)
Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy	115	(31)
The Form and Matter of the Categorical Imperative	146	(23)
Ends of Reason and Ends of Nature: The Place of Teleology in Kant's Ethics	169	(29)
Kant's Deductions of the Principles of Right	198	(45)
Kant's System of Duties	243	(32)
PART III. The System of Nature and Freedom	275	(98)
The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy	277	(37)
From Nature to Morality: Kant's New Argument in the `Critique of Teleological Judgment'	314	(29)
Purpose in Nature: What is Living and What is Dead in Kant's Teleology?	343	(30)
Bibliography	373	(6)
Index	379