From Freedom to Freedom

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
First Cause

This chapter studies the significant shift, in the 1760s and 1770s, in Kant’s conception of what human freedom must consist in: from compatibilism to transcendental freedom. We find that in his early thought, a deterministic conception of freedom is not merely presented as compatible, in some sense, with a notion of freedom. Although committed to a ‘Newtonian’ account of the behaviour of the physical universe, the success of such accounts, for the pre-critical Kant, is grounded upon a Platonic conception of fundamental reality, which makes recourse to the notion of an intrinsic teleology within all created beings. For this reason, determinism is celebrated as a manifestation and emanation of the order, harmony, and divinity that characterize the being of God. The chapter shows how this changes in the 1760s and 1770s, as Kant pivots into his radically different critical conception of freedom, and of our highest created good. By the 1780s Kant is convinced that we are only free, if we are, in some fundamental sense, the first cause of our actions, without any exterior or prior causal forces acting upon us. Everything Kant says about happiness and the highest good that comes after this shift will look quite different, although, the chapter suggests, there are some subterranean continuities between his pre-critical and critical thought.

Freedom as the Guarantor of the Possibility of the Highest Good

2020 ◽  
pp. 264-282
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
First Cause ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Free Actions

The chapter articulates the following problem: given all that Kant’s notion of freedom, and the intelligible realm can achieve, what precisely is the role of God? That is, what do we need God for? And then, even if we have identified a role which God is expected to fill, there is the further question of whether God can fulfil this role, consistently with Kant’s wider commitments. It is suggested that God either seems to be ‘too much’, or ‘not enough’: ‘too much’, in that God can seem redundant, given all that is achieved by the notion of freedom, and ‘not enough’, in that, were God needed to make up some sort of deficit in our moral status, this would seem to violate Kant’s restrictions on human freedom, which is always ‘all or nothing’, such that all our free actions must come as a first cause from ourselves, and ourselves alone. This is a problem that threatens the cogency of Kant’s ‘moral proof’, which is to say, his understanding of the relationship between the highest good, happiness, and the existence of God.

Does Kant Need Grace?

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Beatific Vision

This chapter examines the claim made by John Hare, amongst others, that Kant requires God to act in order to achieve our salvation/transformation to virtue, but that, for various Kantian reasons, God is unable to act. At the heart of this interpretation is a sense that Kant has a notion of original sin, or natural depravity, such that his system requires grace, in a doctrinally narrow and significant sense, but that, at the same time, Kant is unable to make use of this concept. So, the claim is that Kant is committed to, or requires, aspects of Christianity, but that tensions arise in his philosophy, owing to his account of freedom, in relation to morality and the highest good. Kant’s account of human freedom is such that he cannot make the use that he needs to of Christian theology. It is argued in this chapter that this is a mistaken interpretation, and that Kant has no need for a concept of ‘grace’, in the narrower doctrinal sense of that concept, where grace is required to restore us from original sin, and to bring us to the love and knowledge of God in the beatific vision.

scholarly journals From one colonial language to another: Translating Natasha Kanapé Fontaine’s “Mes lames de tannage”

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianne Moyes
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Indigenous Literature ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Interpretive Community ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Maternal Language ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
The Relationship

Signed and posted to the internet on July 6, 2012 in the months following the “Printemps érable” and leading up to Idle No More, “Mes lames de tannage” is one of Natasha Kanapé Fontaine’s most important slams. In analysing my English translation of this slam, published in Canadian Literature in 2016, this essay speaks to the relationship between Indigenous literatures and European languages. It participates in a conversation about what it means to translate French-language Indigenous literature from Quebec into English. Such translation enables Indigenous writers across North America to make links with each other and foster a broader interpretive community for their writing. Given the flow of Indigenous literature and critical thought from English into French over the past decades, thanks to publishing houses in France, the recent wave of translations from French into English and the sharing of French-language work mark a significant shift in the field. At the same time, the gesture of translating into English a writer who works primarily in French but is in the process of relearning her maternal language, Innu-aimun, brings to the fore all the pitfalls of moving from one colonial language to another. The challenge for translation is not to lose sight of Kanapé Fontaine’s relationship to French and especially, the way she lends it her voice. In the slam, French is a language of contestation but also of collaboration. Drawing on what she calls a “poetics of relation to the land,” Kanapé Fontaine works toward a respectful cohabitation of the territory. In this context, my strategies of including the French alongside the English and leaving words un-translated aim to disrupt the English version, expose the mediating work of the settler-translator and turn attention to Kanapé Fontaine’s mobilization of French for a writing of decolonization.

Kant and the Divine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
The Relationship

The book offers a definitive study of the development of Kant’s conception of the highest good, from his earliest work, to his dying days. It is argued that Kant believes in God, but that he is not a Christian, and that this opens up an important and neglected dimension of Western philosophy. Kant is not a Christian, because he cannot accept Christianity’s traditional claims about the relationship between divine action, grace, human freedom, and happiness. Christian theologians who continue to affirm these traditional claims (and many do), therefore have grounds to be suspicious of Kant as an interpreter of Christian doctrine. As well as setting out a theological critique of Kant, the book offers a new defence of the power, beauty, and internal coherence of Kant’s non-Christian philosophical religiosity, ‘within the limits of reason alone’, which reason itself has some divine features. This neglected strand of philosophical religiosity deserves to be engaged with by both philosophers, and theologians. The Kant revealed in this book reminds us of a perennial task of philosophy, going back to Plato, where philosophy is construed as a way of life, oriented towards happiness, and achieved through a properly expansive conception of reason and happiness. When we understand this philosophical religiosity, many standard ‘problems’ in the interpretation of Kant can be seen in a new light, and resolved. Kant witnesses to a strand of philosophy that leans into the category of the divine, at the edges of what we can say about reason, freedom, autonomy, and happiness.

Globalisation and Equity Issues in Post-socialist Transition Economies

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-296
Author(s):  
G. W. Kolodko
Keyword(s):  
Transition Economies ◽  
World Market ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Equity Issues ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Rich

Equity issues in policymaking are difficult to resolve because they are linked not only to the economic situation but also to social constraints and political conflicts within a country. This is even more true in the case of post-socialist economies during their transition to a market system in the era of globalisation. The historical and irreversible process of liberalisation and integration of capital, goods and services, and labour markets into one world market, as well as the gradual construction of new institutions and the process of privatisation cause a significant shift in the income pattern of post-socialist emerging markets. Contrary to expectations, inequality increases affecting the standard of living and long-term growth. While globalisation contributes to the long-term acceleration of economic growth and offers a chance for many countries and regions to catch up with more advanced economies, it results in growing inequality both between the countries and within them. On average, the standard of living increases, but so does the gap between the rich and the poor. Therefore, equality issues should always be of concern to policymakers, especially in the early years of the change of regime in post-socialist transition economies.

THE NOTHING THAT REALLY IS!

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4172-4177
Author(s):  
Abdul Malek
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Dynamics ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Wave Particle Duality ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Materialist Interpretation

The denial of the existence of contradiction is at the root of all idealism in epistemology and the cause for alienations.  This alienation has become a hindrance for the understanding of the nature and the historical evolution mathematics itself and its role as an instrument in the enquiry of the physical universe (1). A dialectical materialist approach incorporating  the role of the contradiction of the unity of the opposites, chance and necessity etc., can provide a proper understanding of the historical evolution of mathematics and  may ameliorate  the negative effect of the alienation in modern theoretical physics and cosmology. The dialectical view also offers a more plausible materialist interpretation of the bewildering wave-particle duality in quantum dynamics (2).

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