Table Of ContentKANT ’S WORL DVIE W
K A N T ’S
W O R L D V IE W
How Judgment Shapes
Human Comprehension
Rudolf A. Makkreel
Northwestern University Press
Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University. Published 2022 by Northwestern
University Press. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Makkreel, Rudolf A., 1939– author.
Title: Kant’s worldview : how judgment shapes human comprehension / Rudolf
A Makkreel.
Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2021025097 | ISBN 9780810144309 (paperback) | ISBN
9780810144316 (cloth) | ISBN 9780810144323 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, 1724– 1804. | Judgment (Logic) | Knowledge,
Theory of.
Classifcation: LCC B2799.J8 M35 2022 | DDC 121— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025097
To Frithjof Rodi
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations of Works by Kant xi
Introduction 3
Part 1. Cognizing, Comprehending, and
Knowing the Natural World
1 Comprehending the World through Intuitive Assimilation,
Conceptual Acquisition, and Rational Appropriation 13
2 Kant on Alexander Baumgarten and Logic:
The Aesthetic, Analytical, and Synthetic Distinctness
of What Is Empirically Assimilated 26
3 Georg Friedrich Meier on Comprehension and Kant
on Its Relation to Cognition and Knowledge 39
4 The Acquisition of Cognition and Its Transcendental Sources 47
5 The Role of Judgment in Validating Cognition as Meaningful
and Appropriating Knowledge as True 59
6 The Modal Categories of Empirical Inquiry and the Limits
of What Can Actually Be Known: Replacing Prejudices with
Preliminary and Provisional Judgments 71
Part 2. Comprehending and Contextualizing
the Human World
7 Seeking Practical Resolutions for Irresolvable
Theoretical Antinomies 87
8 Law as Legislative and Law as Legitimating:
The Role of Feeling and Judgment in Morality 100
9 Aesthetic Communicability and the Medial Recontextualization
of Experience 112
10 The Modal Relevance of Refective Judgment for Kant’s Worldview 125
11 What Kant Means by Life 135
12 Comprehending Teleological Purposiveness by Appropriately
Contextualizing It 148
13 Kant’s Anthropology and Its Strategies for
Moving beyond the Inner Sense of Psychology:
Reexamining All the Senses 161
14 Vital Sense, Interior Sense, and Self- Assessment 176
15 The Distinction between Kant’s Cosmopolitanism
and His Cosmical Philosophy 198
16 The Obstacles to Be Overcome in Fulflling the Goals
of a World- Oriented Philosophy 209
Conclusion: Kant’s Multifaceted Worldview 228
Notes 247
Bibliography 263
Index 273
Acknowledgments
This is a continuation and expansion of my earlier book on Immanuel
Kant. Although that work focused on his aesthetics and his views on the
imagination, it was also epistemic and explored the interpretive nature of
refective judgment. In this work, various other contributions of judgment
will also be considered to show how Kant augments what is cognized by
the understanding with a mode of rational comprehension that is both
theoretical and practical. This focus on the overall aspects of Kant’s
philosophy will also lead me to examine his ethical and sociopolitical,
religious, and anthropological writings in order to articulate what could
be called his worldview. Beyond recognizing Kant’s main stated positions,
the general tenor of his mode of thinking will be characterized. Thus,
while underscoring what is distinctive about the results Kant achieved in
the various disciplines to which he contributed, I will also look for refec-
tive affnities that can disclose his underlying orientation to the world.
One of the virtues of explicating Kant’s worldview will be to demon-
strate that his idealism incorporates many of the empirical concerns of
human beings. Recently there have been attempts to make Kant’s thought
more relevant by stressing his impure ethics, his non- ideal politics, and
his pragmatic tendencies. These efforts will be put in context by showing
how his refective worldview expands on the “world- concept” that directs
the Critique of Pure Reason . Beyond providing a more coherent overall
comprehension of Kant, the theme of worldview thinking is especially
timely given that we are facing social and environmental problems that
will require unprecedented consensus- building in an age of confict.
Some of the chapters of this book include revised versions of texts
originally published elsewhere. Chapter 3 reproduces some parts of “Kant
on Cognition, Comprehension, and Knowledge,” in Natur und Freiheit. Ak-
ten des XII. Kant- Kongresses 2015, ed. Violetta Waibel and Margit Ruffng
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018). Chapter 8 includes some passages previ-
ously published in “Relating Aesthetic and Sociable Feelings to Moral and
Participatory Feelings,” in Kant’s Observations and Remarks, ed. Susan Shell
and Richard Velkley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
copyright Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission. Chap-
ix
