Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:24:14.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Rationality to Morality: The Collective Development of Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2022

Olga Lenczewska
Olga Lenczewska*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington NC, USA
*
Email: lenczewskao@uncw.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While Kant’s account of humankind’s rational progress has been widely discussed, his speculative views about the way in which this progress might have begun and the circumstances surrounding this beginning have been largely neglected. Implicit in such an omission is the assumption that Kant does not say much about the very beginning of human history or that whatever he says is of little philosophical value. This article challenges these assumptions. I reconstruct Kant’s account of the emergence of reason by looking at his various conjectural and more literal remarks about our species’ transition from mere irrational animals into primitive human beings possessing a rudimentary form of rationality. Next, I show how this account fits with Kant’s broader view of humankind’s rational progress and its subsequent stages. By doing so, I elucidate Kant’s guidelines for achieving this progress in the future by unifying them with his regulative view of reason’s past.

Keywords

Kantconjectural historyphilosophy of historyhuman historyorigins of humanityrational progressmoral progressmoral development
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 363 - 383
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beiser, Frederick C. (1987) The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Alix (2012) ‘Enabling the Realization of Humanity: The Anthropological Dimension of Education’. In Roth, Klas and Surpenant, Chris (eds), Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (New York: Routledge), 152–62.Google Scholar
Deligiorgi, Katerina (2005) Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment. New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Deligiorgi, Katerina (2017) ‘The Philosopher as Legislator: Kant on History’. In Altman, Matthew (ed.), The Palgrave Kant Handbook (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 693–703.Google Scholar
Formosa, Paul (2012) ‘From Discipline to Autonomy: Kant’s Theory of Moral Development’. In Roth, Klas and Surpenant, Chris (eds), Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (New York: Routledge), 163–76.Google Scholar
Frierson, Patrick R. (2013) What is the Human Being? London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2009) ‘The Crooked Timber of Mankind’. In Rorty, Amélie and Schmidt, James (eds), Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 129–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1877–1913), Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Suphan, Bernhard. Vol. VI. Berlin: Weidmann.Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara (2009) ‘A Habitat for Humanity’. In Rorty, Amélie and Schmidt, James (eds), Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 150–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kain, Philip J. (1989) ‘Kant’s Political Theory and Philosophy of History’. Clio, 18, 325–45.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) Religion and Rational Theology. Trans. Wood, Allen and di Giovanni, George. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1999) Practical Philosophy. Trans. and ed. Mary, J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. Guyer, Paul, trans. Guyer, Paul and Matthews, Eric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) Anthropology, History and Education. Ed. Zöller, Günter and Louden, Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2009) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Guyer, Paul and Allen, Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2012) Lectures on Anthropology. Ed. Wood, Allen and Louden, Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (1997) ‘Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 16(1), 59–80.Google Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2009) ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’. In Rorty, Amélie and Schmidt, James (eds), Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 171–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuehn, Manfred (2012) ‘Kant on Education, Anthropology, and Ethics’. In Roth, Klas and Surpenant, Chris (eds), Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (New York: Routledge), 55–68.Google Scholar
Louden, Robert B. (2011) Kant’s Human Being: Essays on his Theory of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louden, Robert B. (2016) ‘Applying Kant’s Ethics: The Role of Anthropology’. In Bird, Graham (ed.), A Companion to Kant (London: Wiley-Blackwell), 350–63.Google Scholar
Louden, Robert B. (2017) ‘Becoming Human: Kant’s Philosophy of Education and Human Nature’. In Altman, Matthew (ed.), The Palgrave Kant Handbook (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 705–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moran, Kate A. (2012) Community and Progress in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munzel, G. Felicitas (1999) Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The ‘Critical’ Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Munzel, G. Felicitas (2003) ‘Kant on Moral Education, or “Enlightenment” and the Liberal Arts’. Review of Metaphysics, 57(1), 43–73.Google Scholar
Palmieri, Frank (2016) State of Nature, Stages of Society: Enlightenment Conjectural History and Modern Social Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1984) Discourse on the Origins and Basis of Inequality among Men. Trans. Cranston, M.. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Schneewind, Jerome B. (2009) ‘Good Out of Evil: Kant and the Idea of Unsocial Sociability’. In Rorty, Amélie and Schmidt, James (eds), Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 94–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shell, Susan (2015) ‘Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy’. In Clewis, Robert (ed.), Reading Kant’s Lectures (Berlin: de Gruyter), 277–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smalligan Marušić, Jennifer (2017) ‘Dugald Stewart on Conjectural History and Human Nature’. Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 15(3), 261–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Dugald (1858 [2010]) The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart: Biographical Memoirs of Adam Smith, William Robertson, Thomas Reid. To Which Is Prefixed a Memoir of Dugald Stewart. From His Correspondence. By J. Veitch. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1991) ‘Unsociable Sociability. The Anthropological Basis for Kantian Ethics’. Philosophical Topics, 19(1), 325–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1978) ‘Kant and the History of Reason’. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, 11 (Philosophy of History and Action), 115–32.Google Scholar
Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1989) Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar