10. Pair-work and points for discussion:

• Give talks on Descartes, Aristotle, the Stoics, Maimonides, Thomas Hobbes, the

people and philosophical streams who influenced Spinoza’s theories.

• The most reliable part of the human nature is our passions – love, fear, hate. Agree

or disagree with this statement. Give your reasons.

• A sound mind in the sound body. How do you understand this saying? Express

your ideas on it.

• Imagine that one of you is a rational philosopher and another one is an empirical

philosopher. Discuss your points of view on what is primordial: reason (rational cognition) or sensible perception.

11. Test your logic:

As Mrs Hudson served lunch to Holmes and Watson she talked about her family back home.

“Just how many brothers and sisters do you have?” enquired Watson.

“In my family,” said Mrs Hudson, “each girl has an equal number of brothers and sisters, but each boy has twice as many sisters as brothers.”

Watson looked somewhat confused, but Holmes was able to say just exactly how many boys and girls were in Mrs Hudson’s family.

CAN YOU?

12. Summarize the text in a paragraph of about 200 words. Unit 6

Immanuel kant (1724-1804)

Learn the topical vocabulary:

влиятельный	influential	равнозначный	equivalent
противопоставление	opposition	толкование	interpretation
пространство	space	утверждение	assertion
определять	determine	самоопределение	self-determination
нравственный	moral	достоверный	reliable

Pre-text activities:

1. Idealism, empiricism, rationalism. What do you know about these philosophical movements and their representatives?

2. What was new in German Philosophy? What are common characteristics of the German Idealists?

3. Why do people believe in God? Do you agree that all our actions are predetermined by God?

1. Read and translate the text:

Kant was born and raised in the eastern Prussian university town of Konigsberg where, except for a short period during which he worked as a tutor in the nearby countryside, he spent his life as a student and a teacher. He was trained by Pietists and followers of Leibnits and Wolff, but he was also influenced by Newton and Rousseau.

In the 1750s his theoretical philosophy began attempting to show how metaphysics must accommodate as certain the fundamental principles underlying modern science; in the 1760s his practical philosophy began attempting to show how our moral life must be based on a rational and universally accessible self-legislation analogous to Rousseau’s political principles. The breakthrough to his own distinctive philosophy came in the 1770s, when he insisted on treating epistemology as the first philosophy. After arguing in his Inaugural Dissertation (“On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, 1770) both that our spatiotemporal knowledge applies only to appearances and that we can still make legitimate metaphysical claims about “intelligible” or non-spatiotemporal features of reality (e.g. that there is one world of substances interconnected by the action of God), there followed a “silent decade” of preparation for his major work, the epoch-making “Critique of Pure Reason”. This work resulted in his mature doctrine of transcendental idealism, namely, that all our theoretical knowledge is restricted to the systematization of what are mere spatiotemporal appearances. This position is also called “formal” or “critical” idealism and Kant’s earlier works are usually called “pre-Critical” not just because they do not include a full commitment to his idealism.

Kant supplemented his first Critique with several equally influential works in practical philosophy –“Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”1785, “Critique of Practical Reason”1788 and “Metaphysics of Morals”1797. The Critique concerns pure reason because Kant believes all determination can be made a priori, so that their justification does not depend on any particular course of experience (‘pure’ ‘and a priori’ are thus usually interchangeable). For Kant ‘pure reason’ often signifies just pure theoretical reason, which determines the realm of nature and of what is, but Kant also believes there is pure practical reason, which determines a priori and independently of sensibility the realm of freedom and of what to be. Practical reason in general is defined as that which determines rules for the faculty of desire and will, as opposed to the faculties of cognition and feeling.

Kant claims that mathematics and metaphysical expositions of our notions of space and time can reveal several evident synthetic a priori propositions that there is one infinite space. In asking what could underlie the belief that propositions like this are certain, Kant came to his Copernican revolution. This consists in considering not how our representations may necessarily conform to objects as such, but rather how objects may necessarily conform to our representations. On a “pre-Copernican” view objects are considered just by themselves as “things-in-themselves” totally apart from any intrinsic cognitive relation to our representations and thus it is mysterious how we could ever determine them a priori.

Kant presented his transcendental idealism as preferable to all alternative explanations that he knew for the possibility of mathematical knowledge and the metaphysical status of space and time. Unlike empiricism, it allowed necessary claims in this domain; unlike rationalism, it freed the development of this knowledge from the procedures of mere conceptual analysis; and unlike the Newtonians it did all this without giving space and time a mysterious status as an absolute thing or predicate of God.

Although Kant’s pure philosophy culminates in religious hope, it is primarily a doctrine of obligation. Moral value is determined ultimately by the nature of the intention of the agent which in turn is determined by the nature of what Kant calls the general maxim or subjective principle underlying a person’s action. One follows a hypothetical imperative when one’s maxim does not presume an unconditional end, a goal (like the fulfillment of duty) that one should have irrespective of all sensible desires, but rather a “material end” dependent on contingent inclinations. In contrast, a categorical imperative is a directive saying what ought to be done from the perspective of pure reason alone; it is categorical because this perspective command is not contingent on sensible circumstances and it always carries overriding value. This general formula of the categorical imperative is to act only according to those maxims that can be consistently willed as a universal law – something said to be impossible for maxims aimed merely at material ends. In accepting this imperative we are doubly self-determined, for we are not only determining our action freely, as Kant believes humans do in all exercises of the faculty of choice; we are also accepting a principle whose content is absolutely essential to us agents, namely, our pure practical reason. We thus are following our own law and so have autonomy when we accept the categorical imperative; otherwise we fall into heteronomy or the acceptance of principles whose content is determined independently of the essential nature of our own ultimate being, which is rational.

Kant regards accepting the categorical imperative as tantamount to respecting rational nature as an end in itself and to willing as if we were legislating a kingdom of ends. This is to will that the world becomes a “systematic union of different rational beings through common laws”, laws that respect and fulfill the freedom of all rational beings. There is only one fundamental principle of morality; there are still different types of specific duties. One basic distinction is between strict duty and imperfect duty. A perfect duty is one that requires a specific action, whereas an imperfect duty cannot be completely discharged by fight by someone else. A meritorious duty involves going beyond what is strictly demanded and thereby generating an obligation in others, as when one is extraordinarily helpful to others and “merits” their gratitude.