Articles by Jeffrey L Wilson
Kant Yearbook, 2024
Kant repeatedly uses the biangle as an example of an impossible figure. In this paper, I offer an... more Kant repeatedly uses the biangle as an example of an impossible figure. In this paper, I offer an account of these passages and their significance for the possibility of geometry as a science. According to Kant, the constructibility of the biangle would signal the failure of geometry. Whereas Wolff derives the no-biangle proposition from the axiom that between two points there can be only one straight line, Kant gives it axiomatic status as a synthetic a priori principle possessing immediate certainty. Because we are unable to generate a schema for the biangle, the failure of the attempt to construct it is intuitively clear. The parallel between mathematical and empirical concepts is instructive because both involve the synthesis of disparate intuitions into a unity. We do not, strictly speaking, even possess a well-formed concept of the biangle, because its representation cannot fulfill certain basic requirements of concept formation.
Rethinking Kant 6, 2022
Two intertwined themes run through Kant’s last, unfinished work, known to us as the Opus postumum... more Two intertwined themes run through Kant’s last, unfinished work, known to us as the Opus postumum: the comprehensibility of physics as a science and of human freedom as a causal power. 1 The two themes come together in Kant’s theory of self-positing. Although the Opus postumum has received substantial attention in recent decades, there has been an insufficient focus on human embodiment (self-positing) as the bridge between nature and freedom in Kant’s final period. In this paper, I contribute to remedying this defect by showing the centrality of embodiment for Kant’s motivating project of a transition from the metaphysics of natural science to the actual science of physics. Many times in the disordered manuscripts, Kant characterizes this transition in terms of a schematism conceived of as parallel to—or as an extension of—the first Critique schematism. I argue here that Kant’s theory of self-positing places human embodiment in the role of serving as this schematism and making the needed transition.
The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, 2021
Kant insists in the Rechtslehre that the right of possession is intelligible and abstracts from a... more Kant insists in the Rechtslehre that the right of possession is intelligible and abstracts from all sensible conditions. However, Kant writes often in his earlier drafts of the book that empirical possession serves as the schema of intelligible possession. These two points appear to be in tension with one another, since the purpose of a schematism in Kant is always to relate a concept to sensible conditions. If the right of possession abstracts from all sensible conditions, then schematizing this right should be unnecessary and irrelevant.Why does Kant think in the early drafts that the right of possession requires a schematism? What work is this schematism meantto do? How
does it operate in detail? What similarities between the schematism
of possession and the first Critique schematism of the categories justify calling the two operations by the same name? Why does no schematism of possession appear in the published Rechtslehre? Is Kant’s brief paragraph on a “construction of right” the surviving vestige of a schematism of possession?
The construction of geometrical concepts is familiar to readers of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena as the “shining example”[glänzendes Beispiel] of a priori cognition. So when Kant begins to offer constructions of concepts in physics in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Scien..., 2018
The construction of geometrical concepts is familiar to readers of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason... more The construction of geometrical concepts is familiar to readers of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena as the “shining example”[glänzendes Beispiel] of a priori cognition. So when Kant begins to offer constructions of concepts in physics in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, it seems unproblematic that mathematics is being applied to matter in motion. Much of Kant’s rhetoric suggests that nothing extraordinary is going on. And yet, constructions in Kant’s philosophy of physics display such peculiarities in comparison to mathematical ones that they begin to seem like unfamiliar operations, distinct from constructions in pure mathematics. Few commentators explore the details of particular physical constructions; Adickes¹, Pollok², and Friedman³ are the notable exceptions. Even they are concerned not so much with the character of the constructive operations as with questions of entitlement …
Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, 2013
Jesuit institutions are ranked among America’s best colleges and universities according to the 20... more Jesuit institutions are ranked among America’s best colleges and universities according to the 2013 results by US News and World Report. With such accolades, our community might frame the recognition as an opportunity for greater challenge as we collectively aspire to provide better access to meaningful education with the vision of furthering the Jesuit mission and educating men and women for others. The goal of this paper was to consider a new “sweet spot” at the intersection of service-learning, graduate education and online learning at Jesuit business schools, continuing the integration of excellence in both tradition and innovation. We propose a new research stream that may add to the work of Van Hise and Porco in pursuing a better understanding of and an opportunity to expand the distinctiveness of Jesuit business education. Our work concludes with an invitation to participate in research to enhance the existing service-learning, graduate, and online distinctive competencies in...
Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants, 2008
In this paper, I outline Kant’s philosophy of culture in relation to teleo-logical judgments, chi... more In this paper, I outline Kant’s philosophy of culture in relation to teleo-logical judgments, chiefly as exposited in theCritique of Judgment, and Ishow what roles teleological judgment in general and culture in particularplay in Kant’s philosophy of moral action. I begin with Kant’s view of na-ture as organic, i.e., as possessing a systematic purposive unity even withregard to apparently contingent particulars. Nature is organic in at leasttwo senses for Kant. First, it contains organisms, living beings whoseparts (organs) stand in a purposive relation to the whole being and its sur-vival. Second, and by extension, Kant holds that nature as a whole may beviewed as having an organic unity, such that the various species of life(and even the arrangements of inorganic matter) are regarded as standingin systematic relations of purposiveness with one another. I argue herethat interpreting nature organically is instrumental for the work thatjudgment performs, according to Kant, in applying the moral law tolived experience through culture.
Journal of Philosophical Research, 2004
Thoreau’s Walden is often disregarded as a philosophical work in academic circles because of its ... more Thoreau’s Walden is often disregarded as a philosophical work in academic circles because of its literary form and paucity of formal argumentation. I demonstrate that Walden is a philosophical work by relating its method to Kant’s in the Critique of Pure Reason, and I show that Walden’s literary genre—autobiography as critique—is a function of the work’s philosophical intent: to produce a philosophical instrument of lifeworldly experience. I ascribe to Thoreau a modified Kantian transcendental method by which he investigates the conditions of the possibility of life as such, making the transition from Kant’s “experience”(Erfahrung) as the spatiotemporal and causal ground of the sciences to Dilthey’s “experience”(Erlebnis) as including the category of life and autobiographical and historical consciousness.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2001
Kant's sublime reveals the imagination as a tool for reason's use that can enliven the mind to th... more Kant's sublime reveals the imagination as a tool for reason's use that can enliven the mind to the pursuit of actions that reason can only think. The imagination in its power to present (darzustellen) can prepare the ground for the realization of these actions in life, by producing a mental attunement that disposes us to activity, by connecting this restless, enthusiastic disposition with ideas of reason and thus directing it toward moral ends, and by promoting a sense of nature as a possible field of activity for the efficacious agency commanded by our supersensible vocation.
Sartre Studies International, 2000
Since Kant, modern philosophy has reacted critically and most often dismissively to any theories ... more Since Kant, modern philosophy has reacted critically and most often dismissively to any theories or inquiries deemed "metaphysical." The Critique of Pure Reason shows that although human beings naturally seek knowledge of things that are beyond the limits of all possible experience (i.e., metaphysical knowledge), the categories by means of which we are capable of knowledge are all restricted in their legitimate application to objects of possible experience. Thus, Kant rules out any human capacity for metaphysical knowledge on epistemological grounds-grounds having to do with the way knowledge-claims are legitimated. It is, therefore, surprising to find Sartre raising at least two questions in the Conclusion of Being and Nothingness 1 that he himself labels metaphysical but nevertheless legitimate. While Sartre admits that these metaphysical questions can find no answer within his own work, he seems to authorize a field of metaphysical inquiry whose proper work is to answer just such questions. The two metaphysical questions I refer to are, first, "Why does the for-itself arise in terms of Being?" (788), and second, to paraphrase, 'What, if anything, can be said about being in general, or must we admit that being is fundamentally dual?' (cf. 790) Sartre's analysis in Being and Nothingness makes clear that being in general is dual: the being of consciousness is being for itself (abbreviated as "the for-itself"), while the being of the objects of consciousness is being in itself ("the in-itself" for short). The two questions Sartre calls metaphysical but legitimate ask about the origin of the for-itself and about whether the "being" that occurs in the expression "being for itself" has anything in common with the "being" in the expression "being in itself." The questions are metaphysical because their answers lie beyond any possible experience: we experience being as dual, and consciousness could not have been conscious before its origin in order to have experienced it. Why the questions, despite their
Conferences by Jeffrey L Wilson
Especially in the twentieth century, philosophers writing from both Jewish and Catholic perspecti... more Especially in the twentieth century, philosophers writing from both Jewish and Catholic perspectives have reflected deeply on the relationship between aesthetics and religious faith and practice. In both streams of thought, one finds commonalities and differences concerning the role of the visual arts, architecture, music, and literature in religious life and of religion in artistic creation and appreciation. This conference brings together a group of scholars working on Jewish and Catholic aesthetics for purposes of fruitful dialogue.
North American Kant Society Pacific Study Group, 2020
This was the annual meeting of the North American Kant Society Pacific Study Group.
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Articles by Jeffrey L Wilson
does it operate in detail? What similarities between the schematism
of possession and the first Critique schematism of the categories justify calling the two operations by the same name? Why does no schematism of possession appear in the published Rechtslehre? Is Kant’s brief paragraph on a “construction of right” the surviving vestige of a schematism of possession?
Conferences by Jeffrey L Wilson
does it operate in detail? What similarities between the schematism
of possession and the first Critique schematism of the categories justify calling the two operations by the same name? Why does no schematism of possession appear in the published Rechtslehre? Is Kant’s brief paragraph on a “construction of right” the surviving vestige of a schematism of possession?