AbstractThis chapter presents a unified reading of the metaphysical, moral, and political parts of Kant’s account of human free agency: the transcendental idea of a spontaneous causal power, the normative idea of acting under reason’s highest principle, and the political idea of acting for oneself rather than being under the control of another agent. It argues that Kant understands our freedom as a involving a spontaneous causal power that is engaged under the non-optional commitment to reason’s highest principle, and that this principle further commits us to realizing the conditions under which we can all act for ourselves. It evaluates each part of his position in relation to the idea of robust alternative possibilities, and argue that his account requires what is now called leeway freedom. The chapter argues against two main reasons that have been taken as reasons for thinking that his account does not require leeway: the idea that God lacks leeway and the idea that freedom is not lawless. Kant sees moral blame as requiring the possibility that you could have acted other than you did, and sees our recognition of moral claims as involving the awareness that we can act on them or not act on them. The chapter argues that this requires that at the point of action more than one course of action is available to the agent and therefore that action is not a nomologically determined function of previous states of the universe. Rather, we have the causal power to bring about one thing or another, though we cannot positively characterize this causal power in metaphysical or theoretical terms. Our freedom is understood positively in terms of the idea of acting under reason’s highest principle, and we act under reason’s highest principle both when we act in accordance with what it requires and when we act against this.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentThanks to Charne Lavery and Abe Stoll for comments on earlier versions of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 294.2 See Hull for discussion – though not endorsement – of this version of decoloniality theory.Hull, “Some Pitfalls of Decoloniality Theory,” 64; Hull, “Epistemic Ethnonationalism”; Hull, “Is Being Itself Colonial?”).3 Appiah, In My Father’s House; Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing.”4 Wiredu, “How Not to Compare African,” 323).5 Hull, “Is Being Itself Colonial?”; Mills, “White Ignorance.”6 See Allais, “Problematising Western Philosophy”; Cantor, “Thales – The ‘First Philosopher’”; Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy.7 Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs; Mills, “Black Radical Kantianism.”.8 Ibid.9 See, for example, (Allais, “Kant’s Racism”; Mills, “Through a Glass Whitely.”10 Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 8.11 Gyekye Citation1997; Matolino, “A Response to Metz’s Reply”; Matolino and Kwindingwi, “The End of Ubuntu,”, 203; Taiwo, “Against African Communalism,” 85.12 See Metz for an example of this. Metz, “How the West Was One”; Metz, “Toward an African Moral Theory”; Allais, “Humanness and Harmony.” I discuss this in (Allais, “Humanness and Harmony.”).13 Metz, “How the West Was One,” 1178.14 Wiredu warned against this decades ago. Wiredu, “How Not to Compare African Traditional,” originally published in 1976. See also (Allais, “Humanness and Harmony.”; Etieyibo, “African Philosophy”; Ramose, “But Hans Kelsen.”15 Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 3.Additional informationNotes on contributorsLucy AllaisLucy Allais is a philosopher working jointly in South Africa and the USA. She works partly in the history of philosophy and partly on moral emotions.

In this introduction, we argue for a basic idea. Community-based spaces for promoting forgiveness and memory-making bear the promise of promoting some of the cultural transformations needed for thick, structural reconciliation. As we show by discussing some recent examples taken from the Colombian context of the past decade, these spaces do not compete, but actually complement a pragmatic, thin institutional design for reconciliation. This idea, as we discuss here, serves as the common thread connecting the articles in this special issue. The texts reflect on the practice of forgiveness and some of its specific contours in the context of the Colombian conflict.

Abstract This chapter presents a way of understanding Kant’s resolution of the free will problem that focusses on the difference between Kantian determinism and contemporary determinism. Many of the extant ways of understanding Kant’s solution attempt to find a way of showing that there being only one way the world in space and time could unfold (determinism) does not make the causality of freedom impossible. In contrast, the chapter argues that we can take Kant’s determinism seriously without thinking it follows from this that there is only one metaphysically possible way the world could unfold in space and time. It argues that while contemporary determinism is understood as the view that at any one moment there is only one possible future, this is not an implication Kantian determinism; the truth of Kantian determinism would not show more than one possible future to be impossible.

En esta introducción defendemos una idea central: los espacios comunitarios que promueven el perdón y la construcción de la memoria tienen el potencial de fomentar algunas de las transformaciones culturales necesarias para una reconciliaciónestructural y profunda. Como mostramos al discutir algunos ejemplos recientes tomados del contexto colombiano de la última década, estos espacios no compiten, sino que en realidad complementan un diseño institucional pragmático y estrecho para la reconciliación. Esta idea, como discutimos aquí, actúa como hilo conductor de los artículos de este dosier. Los textos reflexionan sobre la práctica del perdón y algunos de sus matices específicos en el contexto del conflicto colombiano.

In this paper I present a critique of some aspects of Thad Metz’s attempt to develop an African moral theory grounded on the value of ubuntu. I question the sense in which this theory is African, as well as his attempt to ground human rights on his single value theory of ubuntu. In a number of publications Thad Metz has given a clear, analytic account of what ubuntu is. Metz’s work on ubuntu does two things: 1) explains the content of ubuntu: what the value/virtue is; 2) presents a moral theory according to which appealing to ubuntu as a basic value enables us to explain what makes all actions right or wrong. He calls this an African moral theory. It is the second part I am skeptical about. He makes it plausible that ubuntu is an important value. And he shows how we can give it some clear content. However, I argue that he does not make plausible a single-value ethical theory based on ubuntu; it is not plausible as an ethical theory, and it is not plausible that such a theory is African in any significant sense.

Abstract The aim of this chapter is to address one part of Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Deduction of the categories: why he thinks that the application of the categories is necessary for thought to have “relation to an object.” At the center of the Deduction is the idea that having a unified self-consciousness that one can be aware of as such requires having thoughts about a world of objective particulars. I take this to be an answer to Humean/empiricist skepticism about a priori concepts. Kant thinks that in representing something as objective we represent it as constraining our representations of it; but also that the spontaneity of combination means that combination is not given. Kant takes this to create a problem with how we could manage to represent objects as that which is opposed to our cognitions being determined at pleasure or arbitrarily. His solution is the transcendental concept of an object in general: representing objects’ properties as having necessary connections with each other enables us to represent objects as constraining our cognition. This addresses a problem about concept application faced even by the realist empiricist who takes us to be presented with empirical particulars and accepts Kant’s account of the spontaneity and generality of conceptual thought. Thinking that there are objects which, independently of us, are spatiotemporal causal unities is not enough to explain what it takes for us to have successful concept application in which we think of objects as such.

Abstract The central aim of this chapter is to present the crucial role that forgiveness plays in one of the values most widely agreed on as central to meaning in life: relationships. The author argues that forgiveness is indispensable for relationships between flawed agents (all humans), and in particular that unconditional or gifted forgiveness can help individuals avoid the pitfalls of despair and leniency, both of which undermine growth. In addition, the author argues that through P. F. Strawson’s notion of the participant view, central to much writing on forgiveness, forgiveness provides a point of intersection between philosophical discussion of meaning in life and the meaning of life. Strawson’s participant view is an outlook from which individuals’ lives and relationships simply are recognized as meaningful, and which is not undermined by the idea that these same values do not show up in the objective view.

As a result of his central concern with a priori and universal conditions of the possibility of various human phenomena, Kant is sometimes thought not to be concerned with moral psychology, much less empirical, embodied moral psychology, and he is often taken to be disproportionately focused on a priori, ideal features of agency, such as the a priori conditions of practical reason. In contrast, this chapter explores Kant’s detailed account of the flawed nature of actual human agents. He takes all actual human agents to be deeply and systematically flawed, frail, corrupt, opaque to ourselves and often seriously self-deceived and disunified, and arguably takes this to follow from or be part of our situatedness (since it is something we are born into and arises at least partly out of relating to others), as well as from his account of the a priori commitments of practical reason.

A lively debate has been taking place among Kant interpreters as to whether Kant’s position in the First Critique and other Critical works contains something like the contemporary notion of non-conceptual mental content. The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of central moves in this debate.

My aim in this chapter is to characterize the change of heart that plays a role in forgiveness—in giving up warranted blaming reactive attitudes. I present this in the context of developing a Kantian account of what forgiveness is and why we need it, drawing on his moral psychology to characterize the relevant change of heart. I appeal in particular to Kant’s account of human frailty and its relation to his account of human evil. I argue that it is frail and flawed agents who lack an entirely fixed and stable character for whom forgiveness is a live option and a need. For such agents, there may be space to interpret us in the light of better willing than our wrongdoing indicates.

This is an edited collection devoted to the topic of the role of animals within Kant’s philosophy. It addresses key issues within both his theoretical and practical philosophy. It examines the place of Kant’s model of animal minds in the historical and contemporary contexts. It addresses the question of whether Kant’s philosophy of mind allows for animals to be capable of intentional representations of spatiotemporal objects. It explores how Kant treated the issue of animal nature as it manifests in humans and non-humans alike, and questions how Kant’s scientific theory attempted to accommodate animals within his broader Enlightenment worldview. It also addresses traditional worries about the moral status of animals within Kant’s and Kantian moral theory. Kant notoriously denied that we have direct obligations to animals, and the question persists as to whether Kantian moral theory provides the right account of the moral status of non-human animals. Several papers in this collection address the question and whether Kant’s views can be defended or ought to be rejected altogether on this basis alone. The collection considers the relevance of Kantian theory for our understanding of contemporary challenges facing human beings with regard to our relationship to animals.