Kant on Idealism, Freedom, and Standpoints

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Natural Necessity

Abstract:I propose a new way of understanding Kant’s doctrine of freedom. My reading seeks to combine features of two popular opposed lines of interpretation, namely, of metaphysical and anti-metaphysical readings. I defend the view that Kant’s idealist attempt to ‘save’ human freedom involves substantive metaphysical commitments. However, I show that this interpretation can fruitfully integrate important insights that are standardly associated with deflationary readings: first, the idea that for Kant freedom and natural necessity can be ascribed to one and the same human being; and second, the idea that for Kant the belief in freedom and the belief in natural necessity belong to two different standpoints.

Mendelssohn and Kant on the Immortality of the Soul

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-166
Author(s):  
Paul Guyer
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Radical Nature ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

Mendelssohn argued for the immortality of the soul in his 1767 best-seller Phaedo. Kant’s argument for the postulate of immortality in the first two Critiques was not dissimilar to Mendelssohn’s; both may have drawn on the influential Vocation of Man by Johann Joachim Spalding. But in his 1793 Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, published after the death of Mendelssohn, Kant argued that the radical nature of human freedom means that a human being can undertake a change of heart from evil to good at any time, thereby undercutting any need to postulate immortality.

Diversifying Method

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-261
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
Deterministic Framework

By investigating Kant’s anthropology, this chapter presents him as a thinker who was firmly committed to a conception of the human being as shaped by its situatedness in the empirical world of history and culture. However, due to Kant’s own methodological constraints, he could recognize this situatedness only if approached through a deterministic framework that traces the causes and effects of the laws of nature. Human freedom here becomes almost unrecognizable, which makes it necessary for us to acknowledge the systematic nature of Kant’s general “scientific” enterprise. This enterprise employs different methodological strategies and disciplines that all in their own way clarify what it means to be human: a creature that is able to know and understand, but also able to act freely. Kant’s anthropology appeals to us in our capacity to act, thereby performing a function his theoretical sciences fail to cover.

From Primitive to Substantive Equality—via Slavery

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
István Mészáros
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
Social Metabolism ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Natural Necessity ◽  
The Law ◽  
Economic Advancement ◽  
Material Constraints

Unlike materially grounded and strictly determined primitive equality, the realization of universally shared substantive equality is feasible only at a highly developed level of social/economic advancement that must be combined with the consciously pursued non-hierarchical (and thereby non-antagonistic) regulation of a historically sustainable social reproductive metabolism. That would be a radically different social metabolism, in contrast to all phases of historical development hitherto—including of course the spontaneous primitive equality of the distant past rooted in the grave material constraints of directly imposed natural necessity and struggle for survival.… "Materiality" of that kind, despite its unquestionable substantiveness, as linked to the corresponding hemmed-in "spontaneity," is obviously not enough in order to achieve historical sustainability.… The requirement of materiality, in the case of the human being whose fundamental existential substratum is objectively determined nature, is essential. The seminal condition of materiality with regard to equality can be swept aside or wished out of existence—as a rule in a revealingly discriminatory and class-bound self-serving way—only by some idealist philosophical conception; one that predicates the commendability of some kind of equality (e.g., "in the eyes of God" or "before the Law") and at the same time denies the realizability of materially embodied substantive equality, in its defense of a most iniquitous social order.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Kant and Property Rights in Body Parts

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Munzer
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Single Finger ◽  
General Appeal

A “human being,” Kant writes, “is not entitled to sell his limbs for money, even if he were offered ten thousand thalers for a single finger” (LE 124). This arresting statement is part of a broader position of Kant’s according to which persons lack property rights in parts of their own bodies. One can find in his work at least three arguments in support of this position. One is an argument from human freedom. It is riddled with difficulties. The second is an argument from humanity and dignity. It has general appeal but does little to justify Kant’s verdict on some of his own examples. The last is an argument from self-respect. It has some force. Yet, unless one tempers the Kant of moral opinion with the Kant of moral theory, this argument sometimes delivers unacceptable answers to casuistical questions.

scholarly journals THE IMPLEMENTATION OF HUMAN FREEDOM THEORY IN EARLY EDUCATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Zainal Fadri
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Further Education ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Holistic Manner

Early childhood education is now an obligation to prepare children for further education. Education in primary schools has levels that must be taken first with the aim that the child is ready to attend lessons first, such as education in kindergarten and early childhood education. This study aims to look at human freedom in undergoing early childhood education and the values contained in education. The theory of freedom is used to examine the harmony between the spirit of preparing for education with the pure value of human freedom, so that it can be said that early childhood education is a freedom. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. Data analysis was carried out in a holistic manner to achieve an exploration of the theory of freedom contained in early childhood education. The results of this study prove that early childhood education can be said that the implementation of freedom will support the true free human being, that is, free from ignorance and backwardness.

The Recovery of Free Agency in the Theology of St. Augustine

1987 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wetzel
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
The Law

In The Spirit and the Letter Augustine claims that grace not only avoids abrogating human freedom it actually establishes free will. His claim raises some intriguing questions. What sort of freedom is it that can be established only by the influence of another agent—in this case, God—and what sort of bondage is it that is overcome by grace? If we remain exclusively within Augustine's theological discourse, the answers come straightforwardly and by now have a ring of familiarity. The freedom in question is the state of loving God over and above his worldly and time-bound creations, fulfilling (with divine assistance) the demands of the Law, and finding one's happiness in reconciliation with the eternal through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Bondage is conversely the blindness and perversity of keeping one's attention fixed on creation apart from its relation to its Creator and of courting the satisfaction of only those desires which are framed independently of God's claims on every human being. Freedom is loving well or having a bona voluntas; bondage is loving aimlessly, unreflectively, and hence destructively.

scholarly journals URDU-19 The Islamic Concept of freedom of expression

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-218
Author(s):  
Dr Sajjad Ali Raeesi ◽  
Dr Mujeeb Rehman Abro ◽  
Muneera Khanum
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract There is a lot of negotiation on freedom of speech. There is no doubt that man is born free. Every religion in the world is convinced of the freedom of human beings, but to what extent man has this freedom. Is man allowed to put any kind of materialism in the freedom he enjoys or is it not?  Does religion, especially Islam, give freedom to man or not? This research discusses these questions۔ According to divine teachings, man is also made free. However, the freedom of man is rooted in the relationship between man (Abd) and God. The meaning of freedom within divine religions is associated with the concept of humanity (Abdit). The concept of 'Abdit' is very broad in Islam. If a man imagines that he is a servant of God, he must also demonstrate godly worship. The freedom of humanity that is talked about today is terrible, in which the relationship between man and God is not taken care of and Islam is blamed that Islam destroys human freedom. In the ideology of Islam, the freedom of human being is a sacred phenomenon. There is no inflation in this regard. Let man not sell his freedom to any other man. That is, do not enslave anyone other than God. Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib said: "O man, do not go into the custody of any other human being, for Allah has created you free.

scholarly journals Abortion: A threat of modern times

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (33) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Zofia Kępińska Walczak
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Times ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

As one of today’s threats, abortion is both a sign of the times and a challenge for the Church and anyone who sees the evil of it. Every Christian is called to defend life, because life carries a unique dignity – each of us has been created by God out of love, and called to love. Today, when the topic of the human freedom to decide on everybody’s own life often comes up in the discussion about abortion, it should be reminded that this freedom is the right of every human being, also the one who cannot speak on their own behalf.

Bad Faith and Character in Jonathan Webber’s Sartre

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-60
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Santoni
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
The Way

I have two aims: to analyze Jonathan Webber’s analysis of bad faith and compare it to my own, traditional, account and to show that Webber’s focus on character, as a set of dispositions or character traits that incline but do not determine us to view the world and behave in certain ways, contributes further to understanding Sartre’s ‘bad faith’. Most Sartre scholars have ignored any emphasis on ‘character’. What is distinctive and emphatic in Webber’s interpretation is his insistence ‘on bad faith’ as a ‘social disease’ distorting the way one views, interprets, and even thinks about the world. (Matt Eshleman also moves in this direction). But, again, this pattern is not deterministic. Early in his work, Webber tells us that Sartre does not claim that we have bad faith by ‘ascribing character traits where there are none but by pretending to ourselves that we have ‘fixed natures’ that e.g. preclude the behaviour or character trait of which one is being accused.Though hardly disagreeing radically with Webber (or he with me) I do offer critical considerations. While Webber focuses on character, I focus on Sartre’s contention that the ‘most basic’ or ‘first act’ of bad faith is ‘to flee from what [the human being] cannot flee, from what it is’, specifically human freedom. And I disagree partially with Webber’s articulation of the ‘spirit of seriousness’, and strongly with both Sartre’s and his supporting claim that bad faith cannot be cynical. I also demur from Webber’s overemphasis on the ‘social’. For me, the root of all bad faith is our primitive ontological condition; namely, that at its very ‘upsurge’, human reality, anguished by its ‘reflective apprehension’ of its freedom and lack of Being, is disposed to flee from its nothingness in pursuit of identity, substantiality - in short, Being.

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