School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemFree play : a study of one characteristic of our response to beauty through the aesthetics of Kant and Schiller( 1967)Our pleasure in beautiful things is both invigorating and relaxing. It is invigorating because we learn something new, that a certain form exists in nature, or may be imposed upon it by man. This is not learnt as a piece of information - it is an experience which moves us one step further in our search for order In the chaos of our experience. Intellectual pleasure arises from the discovery of order, too, either through dividing our experience into segments, or through putting them back together again. But the discovery of intellectual order may bring us no closer towards realising how physical and mental characteristics are united in the human personality. Now pleasure in beautiful things is neither purely intellectual nor purely physical. Beautiful thoughts are rare, and beautiful touches do not exist. I want to show how an experience of beauty is a model for, and a foretaste of, a more ultimate synthesis between the mind and the physical world. Pleasure in beautiful things is also relaxing, because it allows us to enjoy being ourselves. For the time being, we do not worry about achieving anything, or learning anything. Some experiences of beauty make great demands on our powers of comprehension, but somehow this is relaxing rather than exhausting. There is pleasure in the very exercise of these powers in appreciating beauty, arid, moreover, we cannot be forced into it. It is the pleasure of freedom, through which a fuller self-realisation is possible, because we are not tied to a particular task. This experience is best characterised as one of free play, as opposed to work and other serious occupations. Freedom here is not to be confused with the more solemn freedom of the moral sphere. Nevertheless, because the pleasure of free play, like moral feeling, may be communicated to others and even required of them, a study of free play is illuminating for our understanding of moral freedom. This essay aims at following these ideas through the two books which first gave the currency. They are Kant's Critique of Judgement and Schiller's letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
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ItemThe postulates of freedom, the immortality of the soul and God in Immanuel Kant's The critique of pure practical reason( 2005)This paper examines and defends Kant's arguments that the ideas of freedom, the immortality of the soul and God are postulates of pure practical reason in Immanuel Kant's the Critique of Pure Practical Reason (CPracR). The scope of this paper is limited to an examination of these arguments in the context of this work. In my view the CPracR does not attempt to establish propositions of empirically verifiable fact about men and the world, nor does it attempt to prove certain metaphysical positions. I interpret this work as Kant's attempt to explain and clarify the common man's moral discourse rather than to provide a proof of moral action. In this context I argue that Kant's analysis of the common man's moral judgment shows that the postulates of pure practical reason are inseparably connected to his law of pure practical reason, also referred to as the principle of morality. The problem that Kant says the CPracR needs to explain is how pure reason can be practical. I argue that Kant explains this by arguing that we regard ourselves as making decisions based on thought as well as decisions based upon our experiences in the sensible world. He then elaborates a conceptual structure in an attempt to clarify what he understands by consciousness of the moral law. Kant argues that the object of pure practical reason is the highest good. I argue that the highest original good is the archetype of practical perfection and the measure of man's moral progress; and that man's real moral object is endless moral progress towards the model of moral perfection, holiness. Man may only ever approximates the highest original good. I reject objections that the highest good is a superfluous element in Kant's moral theory as well as the view that the goal of man's moral action is happiness for all. Contrary to standard interpretations, I argue that a vital premise of Kant's argument for the immortality of the soul, viz., that holiness is the condition of the highest good for man, has been misinterpreted and that a new interpretation renders this argument coherent. In conclusion, I argue that Kant's arguments that the ideas of freedom, the immortality of the soul and God are postulates of pure practical reason in the CPracR are cogent and coherent.
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ItemSome questions arising from Kant's concept of the will( 1962)The questions dealt with in this essay concern what is in fact involved in the exercise of the will. The answers to them are intended as a contribution not to moral philosophy or to Kantian scholarship, but to the philosophy of action. Kant's contentions are mainly used as points from which to begin a discussion of the will itself and related concepts. Although his views are critically assessed, the major part of the essay is taken up with an independent examination of the concepts used in philosophical enquiries into human action. The essay falls into three Parts. The first consists in a survey of Kant's views about the nature of the will and a statement of what he presupposes and implies. His central contention is that the will is practical reason. The second Part consists in a discussion of the adequacy of this characterisation of the will. It is argued that it is adequate and alternative views are disposed of. The third Part consists in a detailed investigation of how the will is practical reason. It is shown that the initiation of actions necessarily involves rational activities and judgements, and that this fact warrants an agent rejecting causal explanations for his intentional behaviour. I have found confirmation of several points made in the third Part, in some of the monographs in the series 'Studies in Philosophical Psychology', in Stuart Hampshire's book 'Thought and Action', and in published papers by several others. The page numbers in my references to these papers, are of the Journals listed in the short bibliography at the end of the essay.
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ItemKant's distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena( 1979)Kant's primary objective in the Critique was to establish the objectivity of experience in general. This he sought to achieve in terms of a distinction of all objects in general into Phenomena and Noumena, and therefore most doctrines in the Critique are directed towards that end. This essay deals with the final position of the above distinction for which most of those doctrines have likewise to be taken into account. In an essay of this length however, it is not possible to treat each of those doctrines as an individual thesis and give them the detailed attention which each one of them deserves. With the objective of this essay in mind, the doctrines leading into Kant's chapter on the Phenomena/Noumena distinction are treated with respect to their major problems only, whilst those which are even more preliminary to it, are treated at an introductory level in Sections I to III of the first chapter. The first chapter deals with Kant's Sources of Knowledge. It is argued that Kant's theory on the necessity for synthesis for the possibility of awareness and knowledge of experience holds, and that the major problem of the Original Unity of Apperception can be overcome by interpreting it as a first, instead of a second order concept at meta level; that is to say, the implicit 'I am' rather than the 'I know I am'. It is argued the latter is only necessary for consciousness of self-ascription of an experience, i.e. for determining the objectivity of one's experience. The further point made is that objective experience in general requires the postulation of an outer order (as undertaken by Kant) but that in so far as such order cannot be transcendentally known to exist, it is legitimate to point to the need for empirical verification if our objective experience is to be seen to relate meaningfully to the empirical world as opposed to merely an analytic one. It is then concluded that although this last condition need not hold within a Rationalist model, unless Kant means to adopt the latter, he is forced to admit that the original unity of apperception is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for the possibility of meaningful objective experience. The major issue of the second chapter is that a limit concept 'applies to our understanding. Kant's third Antinomy and the concept of noumena are dealt with. In the Antinomy it is argued that its limit concept pertains to the first cause and that it is set by the concept of infinity, and in so far as that pertains to Time, it is the concept of temporality as opposed to atemporality which sets a limit to the understanding in the Antinomy. In the discussion of noumena as a limit concept it is said that the postulation of noumana in general presupposes that our senses are limited under any conditions and that the reason for this presupposition is yet another presupposition, namely that objects themselves are non-spatio/temporal. It is thus grounded in its own presupposition and acceptance of it reduces to choice on the basis of credibility if such can be established. The argument then turns to Kant's commitment for a causal connection between the perceiver and the objects affecting the perceiver's senses. As these objects can be neither mere appearances nor noumenal objects, it is concluded that acceptance of the postulated non-spatiality and non-temporality 0f objects themselves is no longer a critical and viable alternative. The third and final chapter opens with Kant's commitments as a Transcendental Idealist and Empirical Realist; then moves to the problems attaching to his theory of space to show that not only is that theory untenable in so far as appearances cannot be spatially extended and therefore space must be postulated as attaching to objects themselves, but also that unless it is so postulated, it violates the position of a Transcendental Idealist per Kantian definition. These problems as well as those discussed in the Section on causal connection are then juxtaposed vis a vis the limit of Sensibility to show the overall untenability of Kant's Distinction and to indicate the conditions which need to obtain if Kant is to be rescued from it. This thought is then developed into an outline of an alternative position on the Distinction and it is argued that the concept of Noumena needs to be seen to apply 'somewhere beyond' our capacity to infer objects themselves. That is to say, that it be restricted to apply as a purely intellectual concept to our understanding. The chapter concludes with a treatment of some possible objections to this alternative model. Unless otherwise stated, all references to Kant refer to the Kemp-Smith Translation of the Critique of Pure Reason and are given in footnotes as per either the first or second edition text prefixes, e.g. A or B respectively.
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ItemThe second analogy in context( 1982)In the Analogies, Kant seeks to explain the distinction between two temporal orders. The first, is the temporal succession in which we come to perceive objects. The second, is the temporal order of objects as they are related objectively in time. That we do distinguish between a subjective succession of perceptions and an objective relation of objects, is taken as presupposed by the fact of our experience. Kant presupposes objectivity from the start. Kant's project, then, may be seen as an explanation of how it is possible that such a distinction is made, rather than as questioning that the distinction is made.