Der sehr umfangreiche Aufsatz ist der ins Detail gehende Versuch, die systematische Stellung der Rechtslehre in Kants Moralphilosophie zu bestimmen. Hauptgegenstände der Untersuchung sind:1) Willkür – Wille – Freiheit; Handlung – Maxime; 2) das Rechtsproblem als moralisches Problem sui generis, 3) Moralgesetz überhaupt – Rechtsgesetz – Ethisches Gesetz / Tugendgesetz; 4) Rechtszwang; 5) Zurechnung ; 6) die Geltung des Rechtsgesetzes: a) bloß hypothetische Rechtsgeltung; b) die Autonomie des Willens als vermeintlicher Grund kategorischer Rechtsgeltung; c) die Unabhängigkeit kategorischer Rechtsgeltung von der (...) transzendentalen Freiheitslehre; 7) Schwierigkeiten beim Umgang mit Kants Buchstaben: a) Phaenomenon – Noumenon; b) Freiheit in spekulativer und in praktischer Hinsicht; c) die Freiheit der Person und der Mechanismus der Natur; d) die Einteilung der Metaphysik der Sitten überhaupt; e) Empirismus und Apriorismus in der Rechtslehre; f) der Begriff der Freiheit als Vorbegriff einer Philosophia practica universalis; g) die Pflicht aus dem Recht der Menschheit in unserer eigenen Person.Das vermutlich provozierendste Ergebnis des Aufsatzes läßt sich wie folgt formulieren: Die Geltung der Rechtslehre ist vom „transzendentalen Idealismus“ und der darauf gegründeten Freiheitslehre unabhängig. Insofern gibt es auch keine kritische Rechtslehre. Und sowohl die Grundlegung als auch die Kritik der praktischen Vernunft sind mit Bezug auf die Rechtslehre nur in einem sehr eingeschränkten Sinn als Grundlegungsschriften anzusehen.This long and comprehensive essay is an attempt to provide a detailed account of the location of the Doctrine of Right in Kant's moral philosophy.The main topics examined are: 1) Basic concepts: free choice, will, freedom; actions and maxims. 2) The problem of right as a problem sui generis. 3) Moral law, law of right, law of ethics / virtue. 4) Right and coercion. 5) Person and imputation. 6) The validity of the law of right: a) hypothetical? b) categorical based on the autonomy of the will? c) categorical but independent of the autonomy of the will? 7) Difficulties in reading Kant: a) phaenomenon – noumenon; b) freedom in speculative and practical respect; c) freedom of the person and the mechanism of nature; d) division of the Metaphysics of Morals as a whole; e) empiricism and apriorism in the Doctrine of Right; f) the concept of freedom as a preliminary concept of a philosophia practica universalis; g) the duty from the right of humanity in our own person.Possibly the most provocative results of the essay may be formulated in the following way: The validity of the Doctrine of Right is independent of any transcendental assumptions. Accordingly, there cannot be, let alone need there be, a critical Doctrine of Right; and neither the Groundwork nor the second Critique can actually be read as providing a foundation for the Doctrine of Right. (shrink)

In the first chapter I deal with Dewey’s critique of German politics as influenced by classical Germany philosophy and especially by Immanuel Kant. Since Dewey saw in the complex of ’philosophical’ influences two theorems as crucial, namely Kant’s distinction between a sensible and a supersensible realm and Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative, I shall deal in two further chapters with these doctrines.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 3 Seiten: 486-492.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 4 Seiten: 645-650.

Kant stellte seine ‘Rassenlehre’ erstmals 1775 vor; und obwohl er sie dann 1785 und 1788 weiter ausarbeitete, blieben die Grundzüge dieselben; und auch in den 1790er Jahren hat er sie im Wesentlichen nicht verändert oder gar aufgegeben. Auch hat es zu keiner Zeit irgendwelche Inkonsistenzen zwischen seiner ‘Rassenlehre’ und seiner eigentlichen Philosophie, insbesondere seiner Moralphilosophie, gegeben. Einerseits können (moralische) Unterschiede zwischen Menschen als freien Wesen (Personen) im Hinblick auf Kants Aussagen zu Rassen als solchen keine Rolle spielen, da solche Unterschiede (...) nicht angeboren, geschweige denn innerhalb einer Rasse sowie im Falle von Rassenmischung notwendig vererblich sind. Andererseits können (empirische) Unterschiede zwischen Menschen als bloßen Naturwesen (Tieren) im Hinblick auf Kants moralische Urteile keine Rolle spielen, da sie nicht zurechenbar sind. Der Vorwurf des “Rassismus” ist nur in zwei Fällen möglich: (1) Eine wissentlich falsche Aussage über Rassen erfolgt in alleiniger Diskriminierungsabsicht. Das müssten Kants Gegner beweisen. (2) Empirische Unterschiede, ob wirklich gegeben oder irrtümlich angenommen, dienen als Grundlage für rechtliche oder soziale Diskriminierung. Genau das ist mit Kant’s Moralphilosophie prinzipiell und in Bezug auf die ganze Menschheit ausgeschlossen. Die Literatur, in der Kant “Rassismus” vorgeworfen wird, zeigt einen eklatanten Mangel an systematischer, methodenkritischer und prinzipientheoretischer Sorgfalt und Textvertrautheit bei der Kant-Exegese. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Studien zur Moral-, Religions- und Geschichtsphilosophie -- Bd. 2. Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie -- Bd. 3. Pax Kantiana oder der Rechtsweg zum Weltfrieden.

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

Hobbes's revolutionary and lasting contribution to the history of political thought, especially in De Cive, is his legal doctrine of the natural condition of mankind. His starting point is the liberty of man. In the state of nature, taken as a state of mankind not regulated by public law, it is precisely man's power to do what he would according to his own judgment which results in universal war. The only possibility mankind has to overcome this fatal situation is to (...) create a civil state under common laws and public coercive power. The article gives, step by step, a painstaking account of, and commentary on the manifold juridical considerations Hobbes regarded as necesary before he finally came to deal with the constitution of a civil commonwealth. These considerations are particularly concerned with the "matter" the State as the "artificial man" is made of. Although the details of this part of Hobbes's teachings are usually more or less neglected in the literature, they nevertheless form, what one could indeed call, the foundation of the rational State of freedom. (shrink)

Meine erste Begegnung mit Hans Albert fand 1962/63 statt, als ich an der Kölner Universität seine Vorlesung zur Wissenschaftslehre hörte, was mich verständlicherweise ein wenig in Verwirrung brachte, weil ich gleichzeitig an einem Seminar über Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre teilnahm und rein gar keine Gemeinsamkeit feststellen konnte. Dass ich mich Jahre später viel mit jener und fast gar nicht mehr mit dieser beschäftigen würde, hätte ich damals nicht vermutet.

Kant's philosophy of history as well as his philosophy of religion are bound to his practical philosophy: both presuppose it and both belong to it as necessary supplementations. This fact, now, has time and again led to the attempt to interpret Kant's philosophy of right and of history on the one hand and his philosophy of morals and of religion on the other hand as being bound together within one and the same doctrine of the highest good. This attempt must (...) fail, and indeed from principal reasons, because the two fields never touch or, let alone, overlap each other. It actually is nothing other thanconfounding the world of phaenomena with the world of noumena, worldly matters with heavenly matters, the last end of nature with the final end of creation. (shrink)

Zwei Passagen in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, die eine im „Dialektik“-Teil und die andere in der „Methodenlehre“, sind häufig als einander widersprechend und zuweilen deshalb als aus verschiedenen Entwicklungsphasen stammende und von Kant für das veröffentlichte Werk zusammengestückelte Denkflicken angesehen worden. Im „Kanon“-Kapitel der „Methodenlehre“ heißt es, „für die Vernunft im praktischen Gebrauch“ könne man die „Frage wegen der transscendentalen Freiheit […] als ganz gleichgültig bei Seite setzen“. Diese Passage entstammt angeblich einer früheren Entwicklungsphase, in der Kant noch nicht (...) zu der „kritischen“ Einsicht gelangt war, wie sie sich im „Dialektik“-Teil niederschlage. Dort nämlich heißt es, der Begriff der praktischen Freiheit „gründe“ sich auf die transzendentale Idee der Freiheit und würde „zugleich“ mit deren „Aufhebung“ „vertilg[t]“. (shrink)

This essay deals with Kant’s Doctrine of Right, but in a rather unusual way by being at the same time a review of a book on that doctrine. It was, indeed, that book which brought me, by trying to review it, to reformulate my own view on the issue To sum up the main mistakes of the author of that book: he takes the Doctrine of Right as a direct application of the doctrine of freedom, as developed in the Analytic (...) of the Critique of Practical Reason, to external acting of humans. That leads him on a crooked path to the thesis that provisional right is not „real“ right in the state of nature, but a conceptual assumption, which can be only thought of. With his idea that real right can only exist in a civil state, the author ends up in a position of legal positivism. The essay tries to expose the decisive steps which made the author go astray so that he eventually failed to grasp Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals altogether. Accordingly, apart from the mentioned mistakes, some connected problem areas, which are completely muddled up in the book, will be subjected to a closer investigation: freedom of the will versus freedom of action; free will versus general will; freedom in the doctrine of right versus freedom in ethics; validity of right versus effectiveness of right. Towards the end, some pages are dedicated to a critical statement on the author’s thesis that Kant’s Doctrine of Right is absolutely unsuited as basis for any claim to distributive justice. (shrink)

The concept of Right is crucial to a discussion of any innate human right, the state, and public justice. The article makes the following three claims: 1) Any attempt to define the concept "Right" by orienting it towards human ends of whatever nature, is doomed from the beginning; 2) adopting such a concept of Right foils any effort to determine the appropriate juridical limits of state activity; 3) material justice, or justice related to possible human ends, if understood morally as (...) relating to internal freedom is distinct from the notion of Right in the strict sense and cannot possibly be attained by humankind anyway. Material justice understood juridically as relating to external freedom is unavoidably and insolvably self-contradictory. Moreover, the futile attempt to attain material justice will thwart the realization of formal justice, which indeed can be attained by humankind.The article first develops and justifies these three tightly knit statements. Reflecting on the more recent German scholarly literature, it then attempts to show how easy it is to fall astray from the path of Right - humanity's pristine path on earth - by conceiving the concept in terms of human ends. (shrink)