Kant's Incorporation Requirement: Freedom and Character in the Empirical World

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard McCarty

In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Kant wrote that ‘freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any incentive except insofar as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim.’ This is an obscure statement, in both meaning and provenance. Yet almost all recent interpreters of Kant's practical philosophy find it crucial for understanding his theories of freedom and motivation, since it seems to indicate what we are required to do in order to act by our own free choice. Here I refer to Kant's statement expressing the requirement that incentives be incorporated into maxims as his ‘incorporation requirement.’ How that requirement is best understood will be the leading question in what follows: a question I shall answer by showing why the incorporation requirement, and Kant's theories of freedom and motivation, should be understood differently from the way they are now usually understood.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard N. Williams ◽  
Edwin E. Gantt ◽  
Lane Fischer

This paper will look at the results of what has been termed “the crisis of modernism” and the related rise of postmodern perspectives in the 19th and 20th centuries. It concentrates on what is arguably the chief casualty of this crisis – human agency – and the social science that has developed out of the crisis. We argue that modern and postmodern social science ultimately obviate human agency in the understanding of what it means to be a human being. Attention is given to the contemporary intellectual world and the way in which it has been deeply informed by neo-Hegelian and other postmodern scholarly trends, particularly in accounting for how agency has come to play little role in social science understanding of human action. The paper also offers an alternative conception of human agency to the commonly endorsed libertarian model of free choice. Finally, the paper argues that this view of agency preserves meaning and purpose in human action and counters the pervasive social science worldview that sacrifices agency and meaning to powerful invisible abstractions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-258

The essay investigates the phenomenon of laziness by first analyzing the opposition between laziness and the good. Both utility and the good make reference to labor. This opposition between labor and laziness is pivotal in Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov’s famous novel written in 1859. It marks a radical transition from a feudal paradigm to a capitalistic one. The two main characters in the novel are Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a Russian, and Andrey Ivanovich Stolz, a German, who together seem to personify the contradiction between laziness and labor. But the purpose of the essay is to deconstruct that opposition. In this connection, one can cite Kazimir Malevich, who maintained that laziness is the Mother of Perfection and is always unconsciously inherent in the conscious intent to work. Analysis of the Latin concepts of otium and negotium indicates that the laziness/labor opposition may be deconstructed as a dialectic between labor and its opposite. In other words, laziness does not stand in contradiction to labor but is instead its inseparable dialectical other. In the last part of the essay, the article considers the thinking of Anatoly Peregud, a poet who spent almost all his life in a psychiatric hospital. According to Peregud, Lenin derived his pseudonym from the Russian linguistic root “len” (laziness) in order to make laziness central to communism. For his part, Lenin saw Oblomov as an emblem of the main obstacle standing in the way of communism.


PMLA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
David H. Stewart

One of the most impressive features of Anna Karenina is the way in which Tolstoy draws the reader's imagination beyond the literal level of the narrative into generalizations that seem mythical in a manner difficult to articulate. With Dostoevsky or Melville, one sees immediately a propensity for exploiting the symbolic value of things. With Tolstoy, things try, as it were, to resist conversion: they strive to maintain their “thingness” as empirical entities. A character in Dostoevsky is usually only half man; the other half is Christ or Satan. Moby Dick is obviously only half whale; the other half is Evil or some principle of Nature. But Anna Karenina is emphatically Anna Karenina. Like almost all of Tolstoy's characters, she has a proficiency in the husbandry of identity; she jealously hoards her own unique reality, so that it becomes difficult to say of her that she is a “type” of nineteenth-century Russian lady or a “symbol” of modern woman or an “archetypical” Eve or Lilith.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Ag Efendi Darmanto ◽  
Don Bosco Karnan Ardijanto

Prayer was very important in Jesus’ life and the saints’ lives. Prayer also becomes the important need in the faithfuls’ life. Prayer is a mean to fight againts the devil and the power of sin. Prayer is also an expression of faith in God. It also becomes the way of human being to always remember to God. There are some problems: what is prayer? How do the Catholic teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish, Klepu pray together? What kind of benefits of praying together for the Catholic Teens in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu? What kind of impedements in praying together that the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish experience? The aims of this research are: to clarify the definition of prayer, to explain how the Catholic Teens of Hilarius’ parish, Klepu to do their praying together, to explain the benefits of prayer together for the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. Finally, to identify various factors that supporting or inhibiting the practice of prayer of the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. This research used qualitative research methods. In this study there are 10 respondents consisting of 4 male respondents and 6 female respondents. They are between 13-15 years old. They are members of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. The conclusions of the research are: 1) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu know the understanding of prayer. 2) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parihs, Klepu already carry out prayers in certain times either personally or communal prayer in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. 3) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu understand that the benefits of communal prayer are: creating a partnership or relationship with God and friends, as well as the means to develop their personality.


2003 ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Danilo Basta

Fichte's theory of the state, comprising and integral part of his practical philosophy, is built on the key premises of his metaphysics. Therefore the clarification of this problem in Fichte's later philosophy intends to point, on one hand, to a representative metaphysical project of the state with great speculative power, and on the other to a way of thinking about the state which is today taken to be anachronistic, unscientific, outdated, and hence worthy of being mentioned as a "negative example". Though these qualifications should not be totally discarded or questioned in advance, revisiting Fichte's late metaphysics of the state is philosophically productive even in our times. Nowadays it can be extremely helpful to anyone who has not yet been trodden over by a scientific political science and whose cognitive interest is still sufficiently open for a strongly philosophical consideration of the state, who wishes to philosophically enrich or sharpens his/her view of the state. Although Fichte's theory of the state is unified and coherent, it underwent - especially in its last phase - a significant transformation. It was so much visible that the state is relegated to the background even terminologically. In Fichte's later philosophy the keyword is no longer the state but the "realm of freedom". The state is here talked about intentionally, as it were, always with a glance aimed at this realm, at the possibility and prospects for its establishment. Although this terminological and cognitive primacy of the realm of freedom pushed the state into the background, it was not denied any importance. On the contrary, on the way to freedom the state is for Fichte an important point of development that must be passed. And precisely in this transiency lies its inevitability. .


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Antonio Nicolaz García ◽  
Deyanira Vega Montes ◽  
Ana Gabriel Castañeda Castro ◽  
Eunice Olguín Vega

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Estudio cualitativo que tiene como objetivo analizar las emociones que presenta el cuidador primario ante el diagn&oacute;stico de c&aacute;ncer de un ser querido, fue realizado en el Hospital Ju&aacute;rez de M&eacute;xico en el servicio de pediatr&iacute;a.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">El cuidador primario tiende a desarrollar emociones, y en casi todas las circunstancias, influyen en la toma de decisiones; muchas de las grandes o peque&ntilde;as decisiones que toman los cuidadores est&aacute;n influenciadas por las emociones que son b&aacute;sicas e innatas del ser humano.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Uno de los trastornos presentes y que conlleva al surgimiento de las emociones es el estr&eacute;s ante la incertidumbre que desencadena el no saber el rumbo de la enfermedad.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">El llevar un proceso de enfermedad es dif&iacute;cil, aun m&aacute;s cuando hablamos de una enfermedad incurable en la cual s&oacute;lo se puede dar una &ldquo;mejor calidad de vida&rdquo;.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">SUMMARY</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US">The present work is a qualitative study, which has as aim analyze the emotions that the primary keeper presents before the diagnosis of cancerof a dear being, it was realized in the Hospital Ju&aacute;rez of Mexico in the service of pediatrics.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US">The primary keeper tends to develop emotions and in almost all the circumstances, they influence the capture of decisions; many of the big or small decisions that take the keepers are influenced by the emotions that are basic and innate of the human being.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US">One of the present disorders and that he carries to the emergence of the emotions is the stress before the uncertainty that unleashes ignorance about the course of the disease.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Facing a disease process is difficult, furthermore when talking about an incurable one, in which it is only possible to provide a better life quality.</span></p></span></span></span></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Ogochukwu Constance Ngige ◽  
Oludele Awodele ◽  
Oluwatobi Balogun

Artificial intelligence (AI) has continued to disrupt the way tasks are being carried out, finding its way into almost all facets of human existence, and advancing the development of human society. The AI revolution has made huge and significant inroad into diverse industries like health, energy, transport, retail, advertising, et cetera. AI has been found to assist in carrying out tasks more quickly and efficiently too. Tasks which were hitherto difficult have been simplified significantly through the use of AI. Slow adoption in judiciary has however been reported, compared to other sectors. A lot of factors have been attributed to this, with AI bias being an issue of concern. Decisions emanating from courts have a significant impact on an individual’s private and professional life. It is thus imperative to identify and deal with bias in any judicial AI system in order to avoid delivering a prejudiced and inaccurate decision, thereby possibly intensifying the existing disparities in the society. This paper therefore surveys judicial artificial intelligence bias, paying close attention to types and sources of AI bias in judiciary. The paper also studies the trust-worthy AI, the qualities of a trust-worthy artificial intelligence system and the expectations of users as it is being deployed to the judiciary, and concludes with recommendations in order to mitigate the AI bias in Judiciary.


Author(s):  
Svitlana Repetii

The crisis of the present day, which covered almost all types of life activities, contributes to the development of impoverishment, degradation, leads to an increase of criminality, generates fear, emotional instability in the society. Forced isolation, threat of loss of work and value orientations contribute to the emergence of mental illnesses. Each person is responsible for his actions, thoughts and feelings – for themselves and society. Spiritual development is interpreted as a conscious life activity, transformation of negative qualities, which is considered as a daily inner action. This kind of life activity contributes to the development of unconditioned love, which we interpret as perception of a human being in its entirety without condemnation and pretensions.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Coessens

Life is difficult, never the same, always challenging acquired patterns of behavior and expectation, urging the human being to improvise. Improvisatory acts in everyday life are the result of unexpected situations, where the encounter between self and environment suddenly disrupts the banal rituals of life. Over time, experience and knowledge enhance ways to cope with unexpectedness, and to 'improvise' better, or even 'less.' In music, improvisation is often a situation of choice. The unexpected situation is created, set up, purposively leading to an improvisatory encounter between body and environment. The musician knows he/she will 'improvise' the next hour. But it can also resemble life, by way of sudden unexpected moments which the musician still did not 'set up.' Experience and expertise enhance the fluidity of improvisational acts in the arts. This paper seeks to explore these tensions between improvisation in everyday life and in arts: between 'urgent action' and 'play,' between determined and created situations. It will be argued that the shift is not radical, and the tensions but a matter of degree. The 'artification' of improvisation originates in everyday life by play, tactics (de Certeau) and experience (Dewey) and reaches an aesthetic and ethic level of kairos (Aristotle) in art, exploring actions of choice and risking failure by (re)creating unexpectedness. The artist, like the human being in life, but now from his/her own free choice, is challenged to leave security and encounter the unexpected. But isn't that also the quest of the hero?


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