Abstract: Immanuel Kant’s practical works do not contain a well-developed theory of prudence. His most extensive treatment of prudence occurs in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of...
Abstract: Contemporary political philosophers have argued that we need normative theories for non-ideal scenarios — scenarios that involve unfavorable political, historical, social, and/or economic...
Historians of philosophy often take it for granted that Descartes exercised complete control over his published work, but this is hardly the case. In several of his publications, specifically his natural philosophical essays, textbook and monographs, Descartes incorporated images—many images—all of which required reliance on artists and complex production techniques not always within his control. Indeed, significant challenges confront us when grappling with Descartes’s visual legacy, not least because he had little to do with some of the most famous images associated with his... Read more about Gideon Manning (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), “Descartes, Images, and the Iconography of Actions"
In this talk, I develop a novel interpretation of one line of Kant’s criticism of the claims of traditional metaphysics. While it is common to think that for Kant the objects of traditional metaphysics—the soul, freedom and God—cannot be cognized either because they cannot be given (e.g., in sensible intuition) or because arguments that lead to conclusions asserting their existence are defective, I argue that Kant is also criticizing claims about such objects because, of those objects of which we can be aware (e.g., by them being given in intuition), we cannot be aware of them as... Read more about Eric Watkins (UCSD),"Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics"