God and the Good

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-154
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
External Object ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Will

This chapter studies Kant’s dramatic rupture, both with his own earlier position about the highest created good, and with any theological or philosophical tradition that he would have received (from scholastic or Lutheran sources). The unconditioned, that which is all-sufficient for practical reason and the will, is not, as it would be for traditional Christian theology, loving and knowing God. Pivotal here is Kant’s rejection of any ‘external object’ for the will and practical reason. Rather, the unconditioned, for Kant, is the will itself, in its activity of rational willing, or, as Kant puts it, the ‘good will’. Kant is convinced that only in this way is genuine human freedom protected.

Higher Necessity

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg U. Noller ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

The aim of this paper is to analyze Schelling’s compatibilist account of freedom of the will particularly in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809). I shall argue that against Kant’s transcendental compatibilism Schelling proposes a “volitional compatibilism,” according to which the free will emerges out of nature and is not identical to practical reason as Kant claims. Finally, I will relate Schelling’s volitional compatibilism to more recent accounts of free will in order to better understand what he means by his concept of a “higher necessity.”

Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fida Mohammad
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Compare And Contrast

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas aboutsociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I willdiscuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical andsocial change and compare them with three important figures of modemWestern sociology and philosophy.On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in thefourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the socialdislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult tocategorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is arationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer inhuman agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem”themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years beforeMachiavelli.Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociologicalthought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretationof Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regularpattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, itis not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position ofIbn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history thatposit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divineprovidence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual isneither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historicalprocess. Social laws can be discovered through observation and datagathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents adeparture from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...

Kant on Judging and the Will

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Vance Buroker
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Voluntary Activity ◽  
The Will ◽  
Direct Use

Kant’s Critical philosophy depends on the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, which he borrowed from Aristotle. But unlike Aristotle Kant claims that theoretical reason is subordinate to practical reason. This raises the possibility that theoretical judging could be a voluntary activity. This chapter investigates Kant’s view of the relation between theoretical judgments and the will. Based on Andrew Chignell’s recent work, it is argued that Kant recognizes the legitimate direct use of the will only in judgments he labels Belief (Glaube). With respect to Knowledge, his position is identical to Descartes’s position on clear and distinct perception. An analysis of Kant’s voluntarism regarding the activities of theoretical reason provides a model for subordinating theoretical reason to practical reason.

Practical Reason

Philosophy ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 17 (68) ◽  
pp. 351-367
Author(s):  
Reginald Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
The Will

“The will is nothing but practical reason.” In other words choice, without being any kind of judgement, resembles inference in being either valid or invalid. Moral lightness is validity of choice.

Kant's Justification of Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Moral Normativity ◽  
Moral Requirements

Kant’s arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, leaving Kant’s project of justification exposed to conflicting assessments and interpretations. In this major re-reading of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant’s mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law’s primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant’s arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant’s critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today.

The Redeemed Will

2019 ◽  
pp. 223-276
Author(s):  
Han-luen Kantzer Komline
Keyword(s):  
Pelagian Controversy ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 5 continues to concentrate on developments during the Pelagian controversy, setting forth Augustine’s diverse responses to the question of what the will is under grace. Part I introduces two of Augustine’s central images: the everyday image of a root and the abstract image of the eye of the soul. Part II analyzes a number of other ways Augustine characterizes the good will. Part III assesses the relationship between the good will and the heart in Augustine’s thinking. The overall picture of the good will that emerges during the Pelagian controversy is presented in part IV. For Augustine, rather than having its own independently coherent character, the will is good in relation to God, its maker and redeemer.

What Is in Our Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-168
Author(s):  
Han-luen Kantzer Komline
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Power ◽  
Pelagian Controversy ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 3 begins to look at how Augustine’s thought on the good will developed during the Pelagian controversy. It considers Augustine’s answers to the question of what is within human power with respect to the will by addressing two subsidiary questions: How much can people do to achieve a good will? and How much can people do to enact a good will, to carry through with the good they want even when their will is weak? Augustine’s conviction that human beings need God’s help for the latter remained constant throughout the Pelagian controversy. Over time, however, he understood the need for God’s electing grace for the former, to meet the preconditions of conversion, in more and more radical terms. This development was not a result of polemical exigency alone but the gradual outworking of decades of struggling with the writings of Paul following Augustine’s initial flash of insight in Ad Simplicianum.

Historical Roots of Existentialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
Keyword(s):  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Context Features ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This chapter shows the inheritance by existentialism of ideas from the philosophical tradition. Socrates serves for Kierkegaard and Marcel as a model for the authentic practice of philosophy and for initiating interior reflection of the self. Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus debated Stoicism’s understanding of freedom from external circumstances. Husserl and Heidegger interpreted Augustine’s conception of time, while Heidegger along with Beauvoir adapted, in a secular context, features of his conception of religious conversion. Augustine, Shakespeare, and Montaigne explored inner reflection and the nature of the self which came to be critically echoed in existentialist conceptions. The Enlightenment generated a philosophy of human freedom, defending the rational autonomy of the individual. Critical engagement of these ideas is shown to have shaped existentialist conceptions of authenticity, subjectivity, inwardness, freedom, and responsibility.

Berkeley and Malebranche on Human Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-177
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Will ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Order Variety

For Berkeley, I am not a substance who just happens to associate ideas; rather, I am the differentiation and association of those ideas, the will that there be such an order, variety, and comprehension. In creating minds, God creates an infinity of active principles in terms of which objects are intentionally identified in virtue of actions for which we are justifiably held responsible. As Malebranche suggests, God impels us toward the good in general, but we fixate on particular goods. For both thinkers, we need to see how things exhibit God’s grandeur in being related in infinite ways. In this way, we are freed to identify all things as purposive and harmonious.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document