Knowledge, Morals and Practice in Kant's Anthropology

Gualtiero Lorini, Robert B. Louden, Gualtiero Lorini, Robert B. Louden

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319987262
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

This volume sheds new light on Immanuel Kant's conception of anthropology. Neither a careful and widespread search of the sources nor a merely theoretical speculation about Kant's critical path can fully reveal the necessarily wider horizon of his anthropology. This only comes to light by overcoming all traditional schemes within Kantian studies, and consequently reconsidering the traditional divisions within Kant's thought. The goal of this book is to highlight an alternative, yet complementary path followed by Kantian anthropology with regard to transcendental philosophy. The present volume intends to develop this path in order to demonstrate how irreducible it is in what concerns some crucial claims of Kant's philosophy, such as the critical defense of the unity of reason, the search for a new method in metaphysics and the moral outcome of Kant's thought.

Part ISources and Influences in Kant’s Definition of the Knowledge Concerning the Human Being

© The Author(s) 2018

Gualtiero Lorini and Robert B. Louden (eds.)Knowledge, Morals and Practice in Kant’s Anthropologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98726-2_2

Begin Abstract

Elucidations of the Sources of Kant’s Anthropology

Holly L. Wilson¹

(1)

Louisiana State University at Alexandria, Alexandria, LA, USA

Holly L. Wilson

End Abstract

The History of the Dispute

The very first dispute about the emergence of the anthropology lecture was between Benno Erdmann (1851–1921) and Emil Arnoldt (1828–1905). Erdmann began the dispute by asserting that Kant’s anthropology had its roots in his childhood experience of Königsberg and then arose out of his physical geography lecture when the rich anthropological material was taken out of the lecture and brought into a form to be an independent lecture (Erdmann 1882: 48). The anthropology lecture, according to Erdmann, “developed out of the disciplines of moral and political geography” for which Kant had expressed a desire to extend his lecture.¹ Arnoldt responded energetically against Erdmann’s positions that his childhood influenced him (Arnoldt 1908: 347–348) and that the lecture arose out of the physical geography lecture. He called Erdmann’s position “willful fabrication and an overhasty conclusion” (ibid.: 347). He asserts that someone “who studies geography does not have an anthropological interest, and an anthropologist is not necessarily a geographer…” (ibid.: 355). Arnoldt requires that it be proven that there is an interest on the part of one in the other, namely the interweaving of the anthropology lecture with the physical geography lecture (ibid.: 355–356). Erdmann provided no evidence of the interweaving of the two lectures other than to say they both speak of human beings. Today, we know that Kant moved his material on Europe out of his lecture on physical geography and into the anthropology lecture where he discussed the character of European countries under the topic of the “Of National Character” (V-Anth/Collins, AA 25: 232–234. See Stark 2011, 78–79). Certainly, what he talked about in specifics, for the most part, differed from what he said in the physical geography lecture, and the content in the anthropology lecture seems to be influenced more by his popular work, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, but this still shows an influence of his physical geography lecture on his anthropology lecture. In the earliest anthropology lecture, Anthropology-Collins (1772–1773), we find Kant dealing with the topic of the origin of the skin color in “Negroes.” Whereas he holds that heat of the climate is the cause of skin color in the physical geography lecture² and mixture of blood is the cause in Anthropology-Collins, he is still concerned with the same topic.³

Robert Louden has found further interweaving between the anthropology lecture and the physical geography lecture. In the physical geography lecture, Kant says the Italians are “jealous, vengeful, and secretive” (PG, AA, 9: 423; 2015: 667, see Louden 2011: 139–159); in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, he laments the “bad side” of the Italians referring to their “knifings, bandits, assassins taking refuge in hallowed sanctuaries, neglect of duty by the police, and so forth” (Anth, AA 07: 317; 2007: 412). Further, Kant regrets the inhabitants of Greece “have greatly declined from their previous good character” (PG, AA, 09: 422; 2015: 666) in the Rink physical geography lecture, and then bemoans the “fickle and groveling character of the modern Greek” in the Anthropology (Anth, AA 07: 320; 2007: 415). These latter interpenetrations do not establish that the anthropology arose out of the physical geography lecture; however, it does establish an interconnection between them. The anthropologist Kant is interested in the physical geography and what it has to say.

The dispute regarding the emergence of the anthropology lecture continued in a set of letters exchanged between Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Erich Adickes (1866–1928) regarding the placement of the Anthropology in Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Dilthey wrote to Adickes on November 30, 1904, asking him why he wanted to place Baumgarten’s psychologia empirica (empirical psychology) with the Anthropology when it is clear that Kant departs from the compendium of Baumgarten (Lehmann 1969: 3–26). To clarify, Kant used the psychologia empirica of Baumgarten’s metaphysica as a textbook for his anthropology lecture. Adickes responded to Dilthey quickly on December 12, 1904, that Baumgarten’s psychologia empirica lies at the heart of Kant’s Anthropology so they should be printed together. Adickes believes that the reader wants to know the chronological order of Kant’s thought, not what he thought at a particular time. He also thinks there is no significant development in the student lecture notes. Dilthey argues on the other hand that anthropology is Weltkenntnis (knowledge of the world) and Menschenkenntnis (knowledge of human beings). Adickes responds to this further development of Dilthey’s position by arguing that this characterization is a later Kant, and he writes that he wants to order Kant genetically. Adickes holds that the anthropology lecture arose out of the empirical psychology of Kant’s metaphysics lectures and hence also from Baumgarten’s psychologia empirica. The “history” he writes “with the preliminary exercise of Menschenkenntnis through the physical geography and anthropology is a subsequent architectonic embellishment, which notwithstanding cannot hide the original relationship” (Lehmann 1969; letter dated January 7, 1905). This means that Adickes interprets the position that Kant takes in “On the different races of human beings” (1775) that both anthropology and physical geography are Weltkenntnis, to be an “architectonic embellishment” and not a systematic position that Kant held even at the beginning of his lecture on anthropology. Hence, he holds that anthropology was not Weltkenntnis from the beginning.

The Current Argument

The strongest argument for the genetic origin of the anthropology lecture is being made currently by Reinhard Brandt (1937–).⁴ In three separate works, he has propounded, as did Adickes, the genesis of the anthropology lecture in the empirical psychology section of Kant’s metaphysics lecture.⁵ He holds that as early as 1770, Kant had already decided that empirical psychology did not belong in metaphysics. Although he continued to lecture on empirical psychology in his metaphysics lecture, Brandt believes that once he banned empirical psychology from metaphysics, Kant decided to make an independent lecture on anthropology, which was actually a natural doctrine of empirical psychology.⁶

In his 1994 article, Brandt points out that there is no mention of “pragmatic” in the 1772–1773 lecture on anthropology, but instead Kant refers in the introduction to the empirical psychology, which has been dismembered from metaphysics. Brandt quotes the beginning of the Anthropology-Parow:

Empirical psychology is a species of natural doctrine. It treats of the appearances of our soul that constitute an object of our inner sense, and indeed just as the empirical natural doctrine, or physics, treats appearances. One also sees how little this doctrine can constitute a part of metaphysics, since the latter has solely conceptus puri or concepts which are either given through reason or yet at least whose ground of cognition lies in reason, as its theme. (V-Anth/Parow, AA 25: 243; 2012: 31)

Although he doesn’t in this article, one can easily quote the Anthropology-Collins as well:

But metaphysics has nothing to do with experiential cognitions. Empirical psychology belongs to metaphysics just as little as empirical physics does.—If we regard the knowledge of human beings as a special science, then many advantages arise from this; since […] for the love of it one need not learn the whole of metaphysics. (V-Anth/Collins, AA 25: 8; 2012: 15–16)

That Kant gives these definitions of empirical psychology in the prolegomena of the earliest lecture gives us strong evidence that he thinks of the anthropology lecture as empirical psychology. And as Kant puts it, it is a “natural doctrine,” not a pragmatic one or about prudence either. However, it is also possible that Kant called empirical psychology “anthropology” and anthropology “empirical psychology” because Eschenbach did in his Metaphisic.⁷

Later, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is going to claim: “Empirical psychology is thus completely banished from the domain of metaphysics; it is indeed already completely excluded by the very idea of the latter science.” However, Kant goes on to write: “because it is not so rich as to be able to form a subject of study by itself…we allow it to stay for some time longer, until it is in a position to set up an establishment of its own in a complete anthropology…” (KrV, A848–49/B876–77). The Critique of Pure Reason was published in 1781, and Kant is saying that empirical psychology has not yet become a study by itself and appears to have no other home than metaphysics as of that date. It will find a home in the future in a complete anthropology. So clearly at this point, Kant does not think of his anthropology lecture as empirical psychology. In fact as early as the Anthropology-Friedländer, we hear Kant say: “we must study humanity, not however psychologically or speculatively, but pragmatically. For all pragmatic doctrines are doctrines of prudence, where for all our skills we also have the means to make proper use of everything. For we study human beings in order to become more prudent, where prudence becomes a science” (V-Anth/Fried, AA 25: 471; 2012: 49). Thus, Kant does not consider anthropology to be empirical psychology in 1775–1776 either.⁸

Clearly, by 1775–1776, Kant has evolved out of the perspective that he is teaching empirical psychology, if that is what he thought he was originally teaching, and it is now clear that he is teaching a Klugheitslehre (doctrine of prudence). Brandt would not deny this because his point is only the narrow one that Kant’s anthropology emerged out of the banning of empirical psychology from metaphysics and the making of it an independent course of lectures. He believes that it is only at first that Kant considered it to be empirical psychology. Brandt is not asserting empirical psychology is the only source of Kant’s anthropology either. However, is this narrow perspective adequate to the issue of the emergence of Kant’s anthropology? Kant did use Baumgarten’s psychologia empirica as the textbook for his lecture on anthropology, and he followed the order of Baumgarten to some extent. Some of the topics he covered in his lecture conformed to the topics in the psychologia empirica. But not all the topics covered can be found in Baumgarten. In the Anthropology-Collins and the Anthropology-Parow, we find the following topics not covered by Baumgarten or the empirical psychology section of Kant’s metaphysics lecture: Taste, Character of Human Beings, Temperament, Natural Aptitude, Character, Physiognomy, National Character⁹ (Parow—Character of People), and Character of the Sexes. Brandt admits that the second part of the anthropology lecture goes back to the 1764 Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Brandt 1994: 25). In the Observations, we find the following topics: temperament (GSE, AA 02: 219–224; 2011: 26–32), the two sexes (GSE, AA 02: 228–243; 2011: 35–49), and on national characters (GSE, AA 02: 243–255; 2011: 49–62). These topics are covered in the anthropology lecture even early on.

What Is Weltkenntnis?

Contrary to Adickes, Kant identified the first anthropology l...