80-351 Kant

News:

Here is where to look for course news.

Practical:

Room: BH 237B
Time: MW 3:00-4:20 PM
Instructor: Kevin T. Kelly BH 135 K X8567 kk3n@andrew.cmu.edu
Office hours: 9:30-10:30 MW or by appointment.

Texts: available online from this page.

Structure:

The class will be about Kant, his antecedents, and his legacy. It will be impossible to be systematic; instead, we will cover some aspects of the story in detail.

This is a small discussion class. I'll ask leading questions and do some light lecturing to set the stage, but the success or failure of the class will be decided by your preparation for class discussion. To this end, it is imperative that all of you read the course material twice over and think about what you are reading. To credit you for this hard, but private work, I will assign short reading questions along with each reading assignment to be turned in at the end of the class at which the reading is discussed. Kant would simply say that it is your duty!

Regarding technology: the internet is a very rich resource for stray facts about Kant, so I will allow laptops in class. But don't even think of surfing the web or doing email in class!

Requirements:

33% reading exercises to be turned in at the end of class.
33% first paper project (4 page max)
final paper proposal (counts as one reading exercise)
34% final paper project (5 page max)

Out of fairness to all students, late penalties (8% per day), assessed from 4:20 PM, will apply.

A little advice about assignments.

Many students feel that their answers must be original, so they put a proposed philosophical theory into their "own words".
Please don't do that. Use the words given and try not to replace them with others.

It is hard to find a paraphrase exactly equivalent to the theory. Changing words will usually introduce awkward differences.
The proponent of the theory, if he is worth his salt, probably spent a good deal of time making the theory sound as simple as possible already.

Understanding comes from applying the theory, as it is originally stated, to lots of examples and checking it for self-consistency.
Philosophical creativity is not a matter of re-stating the theory in your own terms, but of criticizing it as it is stated and proposing improvements.

At this introductory level I mainly want you to convince me that you know what the various theories are and that you can work with them. Bold originality is great, but is not required for a good grade. Succinctness, precision and accuracy are paramount.
The papers should do one of the following things:

Resolve a tension in some metaphysical theory.
Compare and/or contrast two or more metaphysical theories.
Expose a tension or difficulty in a metaphysical theory.
Resolve a tension or difficulty in a metaphysical theory.
Propose and defend an alternative metaphysical theory.

The papers are very short. Basically, write a 10-15 page paper and cut it down to the real points you can make.
Don't waste time on boring introductory platitudes like "Kant is a very important philosopher". Just state your particular point right away. Don't worry if it seems abrupt.
Think about explaining something to the reader. Don't think of the paper as a statement of your own beliefs or feelings.

Topic:

Kant was a student of the Newtonian Enlightenment whose main purpose was to square the Newtonian scientific worldview in natural philosophy with the more traditional areas of metaphysics and ethics. His raw materials were drawn from Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz (Wolff), Locke, and Hume. Since Kant's philosophy was a mandatory topic both within the arts and sciences in the German Gymnasiium (high school + junior college) establishment, he casts a long shadow over subsetquent developments both in the arts and the sciences. It's fun to see how he put the pieces together and how his views were stretched one way and then another by his successors. Kant was also a pivotal figure in the divide between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy, as both sides can claim him as an antecedent.

Kant's writing is not entirely clear, so it is not necessarily your fault if you don't understand some passage. Those are the passages that professional historians of philosophy focus on and need to have something interesting to say about. I recommend this procedure. When you are stuck, mark the passage and read on, since there may be more clues to its interpretation later. Then go back and revisit the hard passages and try to work out a natural interpretation. Draw some pictures. Consider doing an electronic search for the relevant vocabulary to see where it occurs elsewhere in the document. Then we can discuss your findings in class. That is what an ideal class discussion is like.

Online Sources

Ancestors

Kant

Annotated, chornological bibliography
Immanuel Kant, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightening?, in Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects by Immanuel Kant, William Richardson, trans., London: William Richardson, 1798.
Immanuel Kant, The False Subtilty of the Four Syllogistic Figures Evinced, in Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects by Immanuel Kant, William Richardson, trans., London: William Richardson, 1798.
Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics, in Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Frank Seqall, trans., New York: Macmillan 1900.
Immanuel Kant, Inaugural Dissertation, in Kant's Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, William J. Eckoff, trans., New York: Columbia College Press, 1894.
Immanueal Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, in Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, trans., New York: The Colonial Press,
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, in Kant's Prolegoena to Any Future Metaphysics, in Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Paul Carus, ed., Chicago: Open Court 1912.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Jonathan Bennett, trans, 2008.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, in Kant's Kritik of Judgment, J. H. Bernard, trans. New York: Macmillan, 1892.

Intellectual Descendents

German Idealism in Jena

Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism

Helmholz

Hermann von Helmholtz, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Cohen

Hermann Cohen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Logic, Positivism, Intuitionism, etc.

Reading assignments

The default procedure is to proceed to the next one unless I say not to at the end of class. Read the text provided and type and print the answers to the questions. Readings are divided into primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are required to be read. Secondary sources are intended mainly to help you with the primary sources.

1. Plato

Plato, Phaedo, in Plato's Phaedo, E. M. Cope, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1875.

Plato, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Plato's Middle Period, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Reading questions:

Contrast forms with sensible things. How are they related?
How does Plato prove the immortality of the soul from the theory of forms?
How are forms supposed to be discovered?
How would Plato rank the objectivity and prospects of ethics as opposed to, say, chemistry?

2. Aristotle

Aristotle's Categories, parts 1 through 8.
Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book VIII (On substance, matter and form)
Aristotle's Physics, Book II, Chapter 3 (On the four causes)

Aristotle's Categories, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Aristotle's Metapphysics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Reading Questions:

What is the list of possible significations of simple expressions? The items on this list are called "Aristotle's catogories".
Aristotle and Plato have different opinions concerning what is most fully "real" or "existent". Say how.
List four tests for determining whether something is a substance.
Relate Aristotle's theory of causes to his theory of substance.

5. Descartes

Now we skip over a few details. Here's a toy outline of what we are skipping, with lots of major gaps. Notice how Plato and Aristotle dominate the story.

The development of Plato's Academy into a mystical branch (Plotinus) and a skeptical branch (Academic Skepticism).
The emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire, which is a syncretism of Platonic and Jewish ideas.
The collapse of the Western Roman Empire---Greek philosophy survives mainly as a tacit, Platonic strain within Christian teaching.
Islam recovers the original Greek texts and develops a detailed commentary tradition.
The West encounters the Arabic translations and commentaries of Aristotle.
Universities are invented to force Aristotle to fit with the Platonic and Jewish elements in Christianity.
The fall of Constantinople leads to a new influx of Greek texts including those of Plato and Archimedes.
The translation of Platonic and Neo-Platonic texts inspires the emergence of Renaissance Humanism in northern Italy.
Platonic and Pythagorean views inspire astronomers like Copernicus and Kepler.
The translation of Archimedes' texts inspires engineers and mathematicians like Galileo, launching the scientific revolution.
Descartes represents a turn toward Plato and an extended role for mathematics in natural science.
Newton studies Descartes carefully and corrects his physical errors, launching the Enlightenment.
John Locke wanted to be the Newton of the mind---particles are replaced with basic ideas.

Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Chapter 1.

Rene Descartes, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Reading Questions:

Based on the primary sources we have read, very succinctly compare Descartes' views with those of Plato and Aristotle on the following points:

Substance
Mode
Mind/Body
Knowledge and experience

6. Leibniz' Monadic Metaphysics

Readings:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , The Monadology.

Leibniz, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Questions:

Sam kills Bill. What's really going on? A lot.

Sam freely chooses to kill Bill.
Sam sees Bill.
Sam approaches Bill.
Sam stabs Bill .
Time passes.
Bill dies.
God freely created the whole world in which this happens
God should be praised for it.

What is the true Leibnizian analysis of all of this?

7. Locke's Empiricism

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Book II, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 21, 23, 24. Focus your attention on space, time, substance, power, and freedom.

Locke, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Questions:

What are the two sources of ideas?
Contrast Locke's views on space and mind with those of Leibniz and Descartes.
Contrast Locke's views on substance with those of Leibniz and Descartes.
What is Locke's account of power and liberty?

7. Hume's Empiricism

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Hume, Stanford entry

Questions:

What are the two sources of all objects of human reason? Compare with Leibniz.
What is probability?
What is the origin of the idea of causation? How does Hume criticize Descartes? Locke? (Don't forget the footnotes!)
What is Hume's view on freedom? Compare it to Locke's.

8. Kant's Prolegomena: Intuition

Readings:
Kant, Stanford entry, sections 1-4. Be sure to look at the timing of his publications.
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Preface and sections 1-12.

Reading questions:

What is Kant's fundamental question?
What did Kant think he learned from Hume?
Contrast Kant's view of mathematics with that of Leibniz as expressed in the Monadology. Why is mathematics so important to Kant?
How is pure mathematics possible?

8. Kant's Prolegomena: Intuition

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Sections 12-13 including remarks

The journal article is on JSTOR. You must access the web through the university to access it, since the library pays for access.

How do we know that a line can be drawn to infinity? Do you think Kant means that you can intuit all of space at once?
What is the point of the gloves and triangles? Why do you think he puts the triangles on a sphere when the gloves seem to make the same point?
Why do actual things necessarily correspond to geometry?
How does Kant differ from idealists and go farther than Locke?

Supplementary reading:
James Van Cleve, "Right, Left, and the Fourth Dimension", The Philosophical REview XCVI, 1, January 1987.

For lots more on Kant's triangles:
Bibliography on Substantivalism of Spacetime.

9. Kant's Prolegomena: Understanding

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Sections 14-39

What are judgments of perception and judgments of experience?
What is objective validity?
What is Hume's doubt and how does Kant resolve it?
What are laws of nature?

10. Kant's Prolegomena: Reason

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Sections 14-end.

Distinguish the ideas of reason from the ideas of understanding.
Describe the psychological, cosmological, and theological ideas. How are they similar? How are they different?
What are the mathematical antinomies and how does Kant resolve them?
What are the dynamical antinomies and how does Kant resolve them?

11. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Prefaces and Introduction

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Prefaces and Introduction

Why is a complete critique of pure reason feasible?
What is Kant's Copernican analogy?
Why does the Critique deserve government funding?
How does critique fall short of a full transcendental philosophy?

12. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Transcendental Aesthetic

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Aesthetic

Why does Kant use the puzzling word "aesthetic" to describe the science of a priori principles of sensibility?
What are space and time?
How can it be shown that space is prior to experience? How can it be shown that space is not conceptual? Several argumlents are given.
How does Kant answer the objection that time is real because change is real?

13. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Transcendental Doctrine of Elements

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Analytic of Concepts

What is truth?
How is the third category in each group derived from the first two?
What is transcendental deduction?
What the heck is the transcendental deduction of the categories? Where exactly does the magic happen?

14. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Analytic of Principles:

First Chapter: On the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding

Second Chapter: System of All Principles of Pure Understanding

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Analytic of Principles up to analogies of experience

Define the schemata of substance, cause, community, possibility, actuality, and necessity.
Relate the schemata of quantity, quality, relation, and modality to time.
How does mathematics contrast with pure principles of the understanding?
What is is about quality that can be cognized a priori?

15. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Analytic of Principles:

Second Chapter: System of All Principles of Pure Understanding

Readings:
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
From analogies of experience to end of chapter

What is the first analogy and what is its proof?
What is the second analogy and what is its proof?
What is the piont of the house and of the ship?
What is the third analogy and what is its proof?

16. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Readings:
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Preface and section 1.

Relate ethics, pratical anthropology, and morality.
What can be called good?
What is a practical faculty?
From what does the worth of an act derive?

16. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Readings:
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Sections 2 and 3.

What is an imperative?
Distinguish maxims from practical laws. Compare to judgments of perception vs. causal laws.
What is the categorical imperative?
How is a categorical imperative possible?