Reflections of Reason: Kant on Practical Judgement

Re-Thinking Kant: Vol 7 (ed. Edgar Valdez), 2024

Kant-Studien, 2024

It is well known that Kant connects judgment and feeling in the third Critique. However, the precise relationship between these two faculties remains virtually unexplored, in large part due to the unpopularity of Kant's faculty psychology. This paper considers why, for Kant, judgment and feeling go together, arguing that he had good philosophical reasons for forging this connection. The discussion begins by situating these faculties within Kant's mature faculty psychology. While the 'power of judgment' [Urteilskraft] is fundamentally reflective, feeling [Gefühl] reveals itself as essentially non-discursive. Their systematic connection emerges through the principle of purposiveness [Zweckmäßigkeit], which the former legislates for the latter. I claim that we must understand this notion in terms of the suitability of the faculties for each other, as displayed in mere reflection. That is, we can only recognize the fitness of two things for each other through feeling, which, in turn, is the only way that we can engage in the activity of merely reflecting judgment. I conclude by gesturing at an even further way in which judgment and feeling are related, based on their mutual role in orienting all of the faculties of the human mind.

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 2021

Kant’s distinction between the determining and reflecting power of judgment in the third Critique is not well understood in the literature. A mainstream view unifies these by making determination the telos of all acts of judgment (Longuenesse 1998). On this view, all reflection is primarily in the business of producing empirical concepts for cognition, and thus has what I call a determinative ideal. I argue that this view fails to take seriously the independence and autonomy of the ‘power of judgment’ [Urteilskraft] as a higher cognitive faculty in its own right with its own a priori principle. Instead of seeing merely reflecting judgments as failed or incomplete acts of judgment, I argue that these are in fact paradigmatic of the activity of the power of judgment. More precisely, the reflecting power of judgment just is the power of judgment. Accordingly, reflecting judgment takes precedence over determining judgment; while the former operates according to a law that it gives itself, the latter requires another higher cognitive faculty to provide its principle. On my view, reflecting judgment should be understood as the capacity for purposive subsumption—most clearly seen in the activity of mere reflection.

Manuscrito

This paper presents an elucidation of Kant's notion of judgment, which clearly is a central challenge to the understanding of the Critic of Pure Reason, as well as of the Transcendental Idealism. In contrast to contemporary interpretation, but taking it as starting point, the following theses will be endorsed here: i) the synthesis of judgment expresses a conceptual relation understood as subordination in traditional Aristotelian logical scheme; ii) the logical form of judgment does not comprise intuitions (or singular representations); iii) the relation to intuition is not a judgment concern; iv) the response to the question about the 'x' that grounds the conceptual relation in judgments must be sought in transcendental aspects: 1) on construction in pure form of intuition, 2) in experience and 3) in the requirements to experience, respectively to mathematical, empirical, and philosophical

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2015

Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical (prudential and moral) judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments.

1999

In the legal judgement reason demands that it extend itself beyond the mere subjective limits of the self in order that it might fashion a judgement that speaks for the other. This is the universal necessity of the judgement. No claim of truth or the moral law can guarantee that others will agree with this judgement: thus disputation is the risk which reason takes in order to judge at all. The author examines this audacity of judgement by reference to Kant's autonomy of reason, which risks itself in the thought that thinks.

The application of moral laws or principles is the main idea discussed in this paper. There is little doubt that Kant’s model for ethics is one which presents the greatest problems when moving from the purity and universality of the moral principles of transcendental idealism to particular situations where the agents must take a decision. If this difficulty – which is the basis for the most frequent objections to Kant’s moral philosophy – were utterly insurmountable, then the categorical imperative would be of no interest in ethics. The study of the faculty of practical judgement will allow us to resolve this problem, and show that, at least after the GMS, Kant attempted to solve the problem of application. In this paper, I will, firstly, outline the many forms and functions the faculty of judgement can adopt (1.1). Then I will explain the two senses in which, according to Kant, (pure) reason is practical: as a principle for moral judgement and a principle for determination of the will, and thus, the double sense the application has for him (1.2). Next (2.) I will differentiate between the three ways in which the faculty of judgement intervenes in the application of morally practical principles. In the first of these (2.1), the categorical imperative is established as a norm for all moral judgement by means of the faculty of pure practical judgement and the categories of freedom. In the second (2.2), the faculty of judgement applies this norm to the maxims, by using the system of the duties of virtue (2.2.1) and also deals with casuistry, that is, the application of the maxims to particular circumstances (2.2.2). Then (2.3) I show the third form of the practical faculty of judgement: moral conscience (Gewissen), that is, the moral faculty of judgement, passing judgement upon itself. Finally in the conclusion (3.) I offer an explanation of how the principles of judgement and of determination are related.

This paper aims to analyze the each and every point of Kant concepts i-e:sublime,beauty,Modality,4moments etc.

This paper shows that although Kant's moral philosophy belongs to moral rationalism, Kant in fact accommodates the strategic strength of moral sentimentalism and thus overcomes the shortcoming of traditional moral rationalism. Kant's theory of practical reason is a via media between sentimentalism and rationalism. Hence, different from moral rationalists, Kant accommodates the Humean emphasis on passion by reconceptualizing it as the primacy of practical reason. Yet, different from Hume, for Kant, practical reason can only be based on non-empirical moral realism. But the problem is: what is this practical reason? Is it volitional reason or rational volition?