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Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the 'exact sciences'--- relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century.Hanna's earlier book Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (OUP 2001), explores basic conceptual and historical connections between Immanuel Kant's 18th-century Critical Philosophy and the tradition of mainstream analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine. The central topics of the analytic tradition in its early and middle periods were meaning and necessity. But the central theme of mainstream analytic philosophy after 1950 is scientific naturalism, which holds---to use WilfridSellars's apt phrase---that 'science is the measure of all things'. This type of naturalism is explicitly reductive. Kant, Science, and Human Nature has two aims, one negative and one positive. Its negative aim is to develop a Kantian critique of scientific naturalism. But its positive and more fundamentalaim is to work out the elements of a humane, realistic, and nonreductive Kantian account of the foundations of the exact sciences. According to this account, the essential properties of the natural world are directly knowable through human sense perception (empirical realism), and practical reason is both explanatorily and ontologically prior to theoretical reason (the primacy of the practical).
Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the 'exact sciences'—- relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. Hanna's earlier book Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (OUP 2001), explores basic conceptual and historical connections between Immanuel Kant's 18th-century Critical Philosophy and the tradition of mainstream analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine. The central topics of the analytic tradition in its early and middle periods were meaning and necessity. But the central theme of mainstream analytic philosophy after 1950 is scientific naturalism, which holds—-to use Wilfrid Sellars's apt phrase—-that 'science is the measure of all things'. This type of naturalism is explicitly reductive. Kant, Science, and Human Nature has two aims, one negative and one positive. Its negative aim is to develop a Kantian critique of scientific naturalism. But its positive and more fundamental aim is to work out the elements of a humane, realistic, and nonreductive Kantian account of the foundations of the exact sciences. According to this account, the essential properties of the natural world are directly knowable through human sense perception (empirical realism), and practical reason is both explanatorily and ontologically prior to theoretical reason (the primacy of the practical).
In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics. Drawing on a wide variety of both published and unpublished works spanning all periods of Kant's extensive writing career, Louden here focuses on Kant's under-appreciated empirical work on human nature, with particular attention to the connections between this body of work and his much-discussed ethical theory. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question, "What is the human being" is philosophy's most fundamental question, one that encompasses all others. Louden analyzes and evaluates Kant's own answer to his question, showing how it differs from other accounts of human nature. This collection of twelve essays is divided into three parts. In Part One (Human Virtues), Louden explores the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethical theory, showing how the conception of human nature behind Kant's virtue theory results in a virtue ethics that is decidedly different from more familiar Aristotelian virtue ethics programs. In Part Two (Ethics and Anthropology), he uncovers the dominant moral message in Kant's anthropological investigations, drawing new connections between Kant's work on human nature and his ethics. Finally, in Part Three (Extensions of Anthropology), Louden explores specific aspects of Kant's theory of human nature developed outside of his anthropology lectures, in his works on religion, geography, education ,and aesthetics, and shows how these writings substantially amplify his account of human beings. Kant's Human Being offers a detailed and multifaceted investigation of the question that Kant held to be the most important of all, and will be of interest not only to philosophers but also to all who are concerned with the study of human nature.
Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the relation between them. The rise of analytic philosophy decisively marked the end of the hundred-year dominance of Kant's philosophy in Europe. But Hanna shows that the analytic tradition also emerged from Kant's philosophy in the sense that its members were able to define and legitimate their ideas only by means of an intensive, extended engagement with, and a partial or complete rejection of, the Critical Philosophy. Hanna's book therefore comprises both an interpretative study of Kant's massive and seminal Critique of Pure Reason, and a critical essay on the historical foundations of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine. Hanna considers Kant's key doctrines in the Critique in the light of their reception and transmission by the leading figures of the analytic tradition—Frege, Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Quine. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defence of Kant's theory of analytic and synthetic necessary truth. These will make Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy compelling reading not just for specialists in the history of philosophy, but for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues.
A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant’s suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say “I”—by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today’s most fashionable ideas about our species.
Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are two broad approaches adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.
The governing theme of this volume is the role of systematicity in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Kant's System of Nature and Freedom will be essential for anyone working on the history of modern philosophy and related areas of ethics, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.
Philosophers, anthropologists and biologists have long puzzled over the question of human nature. In this lucid and wide-ranging introduction to Kant's philosophy of human nature - which is essential for understanding his thought as a whole - Patrick Frierson assesses Kant's theories and examines his critics.
Brings together work by Kant never before available in English, along with new translations of his most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.
There has been an increasing interest in Kant and philosophy of science in the past twenty years. Through reconstructing Kantian legacies in the development of nineteenth and twentieth century physics and mathematics, this volume explores what relevance Kant's philosophy has in current debates in philosophy of science, mathematics and physics.