Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information Kant’s OBSERVATIONS and REMARKS Kant’s Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764–65 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning-point in his life and thought. Both texts reveal the growing impor- tance for him of ethics, anthropology, and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, evinces a revolution in Kant’s thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who “turned him around” by disclosing to him the idea of a “state of freedom” (modeled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the unconditional goodness of good will, the categorical imper- ative, and the primacy of moral freedom. The essays by leading Kant scholars that are included in the present volume illuminate many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history, and the “rights of man.” susan meld shell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She is author of Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (2009), The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community (1996), and The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics (1980). She is coeditor (with Robert Faulkner) of America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty (2009). richard velkley is Celia Scott Weatherhead Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans. He is the author of Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting (2011), Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (2002), and Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant’s Critical Philosophy (1989). He is editor of Freedom and the Human Person (2007) and Dieter Henrich’s The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy (1994). © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information cambridge critical guides Titles published in this series: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit edited by dean moyar and michael quante Mill’s On Liberty edited by c. l. ten Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim edited by ame´ lie oksenberg rorty and james schmidt Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals edited by jens timmermann Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason edited by andrews reath and jens timmermann Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations edited by arif ahmed Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript edited by rick furtak Plato’s Republic edited by mark l. mcpherran Plato’s Laws edited by christopher bobonich Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise edited by yitzhak y. melamed and michael a. rosenthal Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics edited by jon miller Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals edited by lara denis Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality edited by simon may Kant’s Observations and Remarks edited by susan meld shell and richard velkley © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information KANT’ S Observations and Remarks A Critical Guide edited by susan meld shell Boston College and richard velkley Tulane University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb28ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521769426 © Cambridge University Press 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn 978-0-521-76942-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information Contents List of tables page vii List of contributors viii List of abbreviations xii Introduction: Kant as youthful observer and legislator susan meld shell and richard velkley 1 i kant’s ethical thought: sources and stages 11 1 Concerning Kant’s earliest ethics: an attempt at a reconstruction dieter henrich 13 2 Chimerical ethics and flattering moralists: Baumgarten’s influence on Kant’s moral theory in the Observations and Remarks corey w. dyck 38 3 Two concepts of universality in Kant’s moral theory patrick r. frierson 57 4 Freedom as the foundation of morality: Kant’s early efforts paul guyer 77 ii ethics and aesthetics 99 5 Relating aesthetic and sociable feelings to moral and participatory feelings: reassessing Kant on sympathy and honor rudolf a. makkreel 101 6 Kant’s distinction between true and false sublimity robert r. clewis 116 v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information vi Contents 7 Kant’s “curious catalogue of human frailties” and the great portrait of nature alix cohen 144 iii education, politics, and national character 163 8 Relative goodness and ambivalence of human traits: reflections in light of Kant’s pedagogical concerns g. felicitas munzel 165 9 Kant as rebel against the social order reinhard brandt 185 10 National character via the beautiful and sublime? robert.b.louden 198 iv science and history 217 11 Absent an even finer feeling: a commentary on the opening of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime peter fenves 219 12 The pursuit of science as decadence in Kant’s Remarks in “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” john h. zammito 234 13 Kant, human nature, and history after Rousseau karl ameriks 247 Bibliography 266 Index 278 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information Tables Table 6.1 Examples of objects with respect to true and false sublimity. 132 Table 7.1 The three modalities of the relationship between nature and morality. 146 Table 7.2 The trichotomy of feelings. 147 Table 7.3 The feelings that compensate for the lack of virtue. 148 Table 7.4 The four human types. 150 Table 7.5 Human types and nature’s purposes. 151 Table 7.6 The correspondence of temperaments and natural drives. 152 Table 7.7 Expanded version of the great portrait of nature. 155 Table 7.8 The degeneration of beautiful and sublime qualities. 157 Table 7.9 Gender and its degenerations. 159 Table 7.10 Temperaments and their degenerative forms. 160 vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76942-6 - Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide Edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley Frontmatter More information Contributors karl ameriks is the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Kant’s Theory of Mind (1982, 2nd edn., 2000), Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (2000), Interpreting Kant’sCritiques(2003), and Kant and the Historical Turn (2006). He has edited The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge University Press, 2000), K. L. Reinhold, Letters on the Kantian Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and coedited Kants Ethik (2004)andKant’sMoral and Legal Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2009). reinhard brandt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Marburg. He has published on Greek philosophy and the Enlightenment in both German and Italian, including Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte (2000), and is editor of works of Kant in the Akademie-Ausgabe (Berlin). Books on Kant: Universität zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung: Kants “Streit der Fakultäten,” mit einem Anhang zu Heideggers “Rektoratsrede” (Berlin 2003), Die Bestimmung des Menschen bei Kant (Hamburg 2007; 2nd printing, 2009), and Immanuel Kant – Was bleibt? (Hamburg 2010; 2nd printing, 2011). robert r. clewis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gwynedd- Mercy College, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He is translator of the Mrongovius lecture in Lectures on Anthropology for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. alix cohen is a Lecturer at the University of York and a Research Fellow at the University of Neuchâtel.