Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics
Julian Wuerth
Abstract
This book presents a new interpretation of Kant’s theories of mind, action, and ethics. As the author of a Copernican turn in philosophy, Kant places the mind at the centre of his philosophy, and yet his theory of the mind remains an enigma. The book begins with a revolutionary new interpretation of this theory of mind. This new interpretation considers a far wider range of Kant’s recorded thought from across his philosophical corpus than previous interpretations, and advances in tandem with an interpretation of the foundations of Kant’s transcendental idealism and his metaphysics of substance ... More
This book presents a new interpretation of Kant’s theories of mind, action, and ethics. As the author of a Copernican turn in philosophy, Kant places the mind at the centre of his philosophy, and yet his theory of the mind remains an enigma. The book begins with a revolutionary new interpretation of this theory of mind. This new interpretation considers a far wider range of Kant’s recorded thought from across his philosophical corpus than previous interpretations, and advances in tandem with an interpretation of the foundations of Kant’s transcendental idealism and his metaphysics of substance. Against traditional empiricist approaches, the book demonstrates that Kant argues that we are conscious of our own noumenal substantiality and simplicity. But against rational psychologists, Kant draws on the teachings of his transcendental idealism to strip the conclusions of our noumenal substantiality and simplicity of their ‘usefulness’. In the Paralogisms and elsewhere, Kant thus argues that we are not licensed to conclude our substantiality and simplicity in a sense that entails our permanence, our incorruptibility, or our immortality.
Keywords:
Kant,
mind,
transcendental idealism,
usefulness,
Paralogisms
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199587629 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587629.001.0001 |
