Alix

KANT’S L E C T U R E S O N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
Kant’s lectures on anthropology, which formed the basis of his Anthro-

pology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), contain many observa-
tions on human nature, culture and psychology, and illuminate his
distinctive approach to the human sciences. The essays in the present
volume, written by an international team of leading Kant scholars,
offer the first comprehensive scholarly assessment of these lectures,
their philosophical importance, their evolution and their relation to
Kant’s critical philosophy. They explore a wide range of topics, includ-
ing Kant’s account of cognition, the senses, self-knowledge, freedom,
passion, desire, morality, culture, education and cosmopolitanism.
The volume will enrich current debates within Kantian scholarship
as well as beyond, and will be of great interest to upper-level students
and scholars of Kant, the history of anthropology, the philosophy of
psychology and the social sciences.
a l i x c o h e n is Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

She is the author of Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology
and History (2009), and has published articles in journals including
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Kantian Review, History of Philosophy
Quarterly and British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
c a mb r id g e cr iti ca l g u i d es
Titles published in this series:

Hegel’s Phenomenology Of Spirit
edited by dean moyar and michael quante
Mill’s On Liberty
e di ted by c. l . t en
Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim
edited by am é l ie ok s en be r g r o r ty an d j am es s ch m i d t
Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
e dit ed b y je n s tim m e rm a n n
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason
edit ed b y a n dr e w s r ea th a n d j en s ti m m erm an n
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
edited by arif ahmed
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript
edi te d b y r ick a n th on y f u rta k
Plato’s Republic
edited by mark l. mcpherran
Plato’s Laws
e di te d b y chr i st op h er bobo n i ch
Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise
edited by yitzhak y. melamed and
mi c h a el a . r os en th al
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
edi t ed by j o n mi l l er
Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals
edited by lara denis
Continued at the back of the book
KANT’S
Lectures on Anthropology
A Critical Guide
edited by
alix cohen
University of Edinburgh
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
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© Cambridge University Press 2014
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First published 2014
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accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of tables page vii

List of contributors viii
Preface xi
List of translations and abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
alix cohen
1 Kant’s lectures on anthropology: some orienting remarks 10
werner stark
2 Self-cognition and self-assessment 18
rudolf a. makkreel
3 Kant on the phenomenology of touch and vision 38
g a r y h a t fi e l d
4 Meat on the bones: Kant’s account of cognition in the
anthropology lectures 57
t i m j a n k o w i a k a n d e r i c wa t k i n s
5 The anthropology of cognition and its pragmatic implications 76
alix cohen
6 Affects and passions 94
patrick r. frierson
7 The inclination toward freedom 114
paul guyer
8 Empirical desire 133
a l l e n w. wo o d
v
vi Contents
9 Kant as “vitalist”: the “principium of life” in Anthropologie
Friedländer 151
susan meld shell
10 Indispensable education of the being of reason and speech 172
g. felicitas munzel
11 Kant on civilisation, culture and moralisation 191
c a t h e r i n e wi l s o n
12 Cosmopolitical unity: the final destiny of the human species 211
robert b. louden
13 What a young man needs for his venture into the world: the
function and evolution of the “Characteristics” 230
j ohn h . za mm it o
Bibliography 249
Index 265
Tables
5.1 Varieties of understanding page 77

5.2 Human types and nature’s purposes 79
5.3 Cognitive disparities between temperaments 82
5.4 Cognitive disparities between nations 82
5.5 Cognitive variations between genders 82
9.1 Arrangement of Faculties in Anthropologie Friedländer 165
vii
List of contributors
alix cohen is Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is

the author of Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and
History (2009), and editor of Kant on Emotion and Value (2014). She is
also Associate Editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy
and the Oxford Bibliography Online.
patrick r. frierson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Gar-
rett Fellow in the Humanities at Whitman College in Walla Walla,
Washington. He is the author of Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s
Moral Philosophy (2003), Kant’s Questions: What Is the Human Being?
(2013), and Kant’s Empirical Psychology (2014), and co-editor of Kant:
Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime and Other Writings (2011).
paul guyer is the Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philoso-
phy at Brown University, and Florence R. C. Murray Professor Emeritus
at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of nine books and
editor of five anthologies on the philosophy of Kant, general co-editor of
the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, and an editor
and translator of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of the Power
of Judgment, and Notes and Fragments within that series as well as of
Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other
Writings in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. He is the
author most recently of A History of Modern Aesthetics in three volumes
(2014).
gary hatfield is Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Phi-
losophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written on the history
of modern philosophy and the history and philosophy of psychology
from medieval times to the present, including The Natural and the
Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz (1990),
Descartes and the Meditations (2003), and Perception and Cognition: Essays
in the Philosophy of Psychology (2009).
viii
List of contributors ix
tim jankowiak received his PhD from the University of California, San
Diego, in 2012. He is currently an assistant professor of philosophy at
Towson University. His research focuses primarily on Kant’s theory of
empirical cognition, especially Kant’s theories of sensation and of the
intentionality of sensory consciousness.
robert b. louden is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Southern Maine. His publications include Kant’s Human Being
(2011), The World We Want (2007), Kant’s Impure Ethics (2000), and
Morality and Moral Theory (1992). Louden is also co-editor and transla-
tor of two volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant.
rudolf a. makkreel is Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus
of Philosophy at Emory University and author of Dilthey, Philosopher
of the Human Studies (1975), Imagination and Interpretation in Kant:
The Hermeneutical Import of the “Critique of Judgment” (1990), and
Orientation and Judgment in Hermeneutics (2015). He edited the Journal
of the History of Philosophy from 1983 to 1998. Makkreel is the co-editor
of Dilthey’s Selected Works (five volumes so far), of Neo-Kantianism in
Contemporary Philosophy (2010) and of Recent Contributions to Dilthey’s
Philosophy of the Human Sciences (2011).
g. felicitas munzel is Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies and
Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She is the
author of Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical” Link of
Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (1999), Kant’s Conception
of Pedagogy: Toward Education for Freedom (2012), and articles on Kant’s
moral philosophy, anthropology, and pedagogical writings. She is the
translator of Kant’s 1775–6 Friedländer anthropology lectures (2012) in
the Cambridge University Press series, The Cambridge Edition of the
Works of Immanuel Kant.
susan meld shell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political
Science at Boston College. Her books include The Rights of Reason:
A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics (1980); The Embodiment of
Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation and Community (1996); Kant and the
Limits of Autonomy (2009); and (edited, with Richard Velkley) Kant’s
“Observations” and “Remarks”: A Critical Guide (2012).
werner stark is Honorarprofessor at Philipps-University, Marburg,
and wissenschaftlicher Angestellter, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie
x List of contributors
der Wissenschaften: Arbeitsstelle Kant-Ausgabe, Potsdam. He is co-
editor of Kants gesammelte Schriften, Volume 25 (Vorlesungen über Anthro-
pologie, 1997) and editor of Volume 26 (Vorlesungen über physische
Geographie, forthcoming). He is also author of Nachforschungen zu
Briefen und Handschriften Immanuel Kants (1993) and has been gen-
eral editor and contributor to the series Kant-Forschungen (Volumes
1–13).
eric watkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,
San Diego. He is the author of Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality
(2005) and the editor of Kant and the Sciences (2001) and Immanuel
Kant: Natural Science (2012). He is also the translator of Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials (2009).
catherine wilson is Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of York. Her most recent book is Epicureanism at the Origins of
Modernity (2008). She is the author of a number of essays on Kant’s
anthropology and his critical methodology.
allen w. wood is Ruth Norman Halls Professor at Indiana University,
Bloomington and Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor Emeritus at
Stanford University. He is author of eleven books and editor or translator
of twelve others, mainly in the areas of Kant and German idealism, and
moral and political philosophy. His most recent publication is The Free
Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical
German Philosophy (2014).
john h. zammito is John Antony Weir Professor of History at Rice
University. His publications include The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of
Judgment (1992), Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (2002), and
A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-positivism in the Study of Science
from Quine to Latour (2004).
Preface
The idea for this volume grew out of conversations I had with Thomas
Sturm, and in particular one that took place at the 11th International Kant
Congress in Pisa in May 2010. We agreed that the publication of the Lectures
on Anthropology in the German Academy edition of Kant’s Gesammelte
Schriften (1997) and the (then forthcoming and now published) translation
of these Lectures in the series of the Cambridge Edition of the Works
of Immanuel Kant provided an opportune moment to take stock of their
historical importance and philosophical relevance. Although unfortunately
our original project did not come to fruition, it prompted the work on this
volume, for which I am grateful.
This volume would not have been possible without the help of many
people. First, I would like to thank Hilary Gaskin for helping me bring
the project to completion – her constant support throughout the pro-
cess is very much appreciated. I also want to express my gratitude to all
the contributors for making my life much easier by providing fantastic
contributions. Particular thanks go to Werner Stark, whose piece on the
history of the Lectures was a welcome late addition to an already rich
volume, to Joshua Mendelsohn, who went beyond the call of duty and
spent his holidays translating this piece so that it could be included in
time for publication, and to Jonathan Head for compiling a very thorough
index.
I am also very grateful to the editors of the translations of Kant’s Lectures
on Anthropology, Robert Clewis, Robert Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel and
Allen Wood, as well as Cambridge University Press, for sharing the early
proofs of their work with the contributors to this volume. My thanks are
also due to two anonymous external readers whose positive comments
and feedback were of great assistance whilst assembling the contributions.
Finally I would like to acknowledge a big debt to others at the Press,
xi
xii Preface
and in particular Rosemary Crawley and Gillian Dadd, for their help and
understanding when inevitable delays emerged.
On a more personal note, I would like to thank Cain Todd for his
ongoing faith in me despite evidence to the contrary, and Noa for her
special brand of joyful support.
Translations and abbreviations
Kant’s works are cited in the body of the text according to the volume
and page number in Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlichen
preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902–),
abbreviated in the list below as “Ak.” Unless noted otherwise in their essays,
authors use translations from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant, series editors Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992–).
The following abbreviations are used to refer to specific works by Kant.
A Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798),

Ak 7
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint
AF Vorlesungen über Anthropologie Friedländer
(1775–6), Ak 25.1
Friedländer’s Notes on Kant’s Anthropology Lectures
AN Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des
Himmels (1755), Ak 2
Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens
Bem Bemerkungen zu den “Beobachtungen über das
Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen” (1764–5),
Ak 20
Remarks in the “Observations on the Feeling of the
Beautiful and Sublime”
Beo Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und
Erhabenen (1764), Ak 2
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime
C Briefe, Ak 10–13
Correspondence
xiii
xiv List of translations and abbreviations
ED Das Ende aller Dinge (1794), Ak 8
The End of All Things
EF Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf
(1795), Ak 8
Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project
Em Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer
Demonstration des Dasein Gottes (1763), Ak 2
The Only Possible Argument in Support of a
Demonstration of the Existence of God
G Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak 4
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Idea Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in
weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784), Ak 8
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan
Aim
KpV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5
Critique of Pratical Reason
KrV Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, 1787)
Critique of Pure Reason
KU Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Ak 5
Critique of the Power of Judgment
Log Logik (1800), Ak 9
Jäsche Logic
MA Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte
(1786), Ak 8
Conjectural Beginning of Human History
MAN Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft
(1786), Ak 4
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
MS Metaphysik der Sitten (1797–98), Ak 6
Metaphysics of Morals
N Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesung in
dem Winterhalbenjahre 1765–1766 (1765), Ak 2
Mr. Immanuel Kant’s Announcement of the
Programme of His Lectures for the Winter Semester
1765–6
PhilEnz Philosophische Enzyklopädie, Ak 29
Philosophical Encyclopedia (1781–2)
PND Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae
nova dilucidatio (1755), Ak 1
List of translations and abbreviations xv
A New Elucidation of the First Principles of
Metaphysical Cognition
PPH Praktische Philosophie Herder (1762–4), Ak 27.1
J. G. Herder’s Notes on Kant’s Practical Philosophy
Lectures
Prol Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783),
Ak 04
R Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft
(1793–4), Ak 6
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Ref Reflexionen, Ak 14–23
References here are to the number of the
Reflection and then to the volume and the page of
the Akademie edition
RezMoscati Recension von Moscatis Schrift: Von dem
körperlichen wesentlichen Unterschiede zwischen der
Structur der Thiere und Menschen (1771), Ak 2
Review of Moscati’s work Of the Corporeal
Essential Differences between the Structure of
Animals and Humans
RH Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie
der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785), Ak 8
Review of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of
the History of Humanity
Ri Bemerkungen in den “Beobachtungen über das
Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen” (1764–5), ed.
M. Rischmüller (Felix Meiner, 1991)
Remarks on the “Observations on the Feeling of the
Beautiful and Sublime”
SF Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798), Ak 7
The Conflict of the Faculties
SOS Aus Soemmerring über das Organ der Seele (1796),
Ak 12
From Soemmerring’s On the Organ of the Soul
TP Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie
richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis (1793),
Ak 8
On the Common Saying: That May Be True in
Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice
xvi List of translations and abbreviations
UD Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze
der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral (1764),
Ak 2
Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles
of Natural Theology and Morality
ÜGTP Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der
Philosophie (1788), Ak 8
On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy
VA-name Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, followed by the
name of the note taker, Ak 25
Lectures on Anthropology
VL-name Vorlesungen über Logik, followed by the name of
the note taker, Ak 24
Lectures on Logic
VM-name Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, followed by the name
of the note taker, Ak 28, 29
Lectures on Metaphysics
VMo-name Vorlesungen über Moralphilosophie, followed by the
name of the note taker, Ak 27, 29
Lectures on Moral Philosophy
VNR-Feyerabend Naturrecht Feyerabend (1784), Ak 27
Kant’s Lectures on Natural Right
VP Über Pädagogik (1803), Ak 9
Lectures on Pedagogy
V-PG Vorlesungen über physische Geographie, Ak 26
Lectures on Physical Geography
VvRM Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen (1775),
Ak 2
Of the Different Races of Human Beings
WA Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
(1784), Ak 8
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Introduction
Alix Cohen
Kant intended his lectures on anthropology to teach students how to apply

what they learnt at university to their future profession as well as to the
conduct of their life in general.1 As he writes to Markus Herz toward the
end of 1773, his
lecture course on Anthropologie . . . [will] disclose the sources of all the [prac-
tical] sciences, the science of morality, of skill, of human intercourse, of the
way to educate and govern human beings, and thus of everything that
pertains to the practical. (C 10:145)2
The pedagogical aim of this course was to help his students become citizens
of the world by showing them how to make their knowledge relevant,
applicable and useful. Famously, these lectures were popular not only in
terms of their style but also in terms of their audience. One of Kant’s
amanuenses, Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann, reported that they were ‘an
extremely pleasant instruction’ that commanded the most attendance of
all of Kant’s lectures, including from outside the University of Königsberg.3
1 Volume 25 of the Academy edition of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (Göttingen, 1997), as well as
its English translation (Cambridge University Press, 2013), contains extremely useful introductions
detailing the nature of the transcripts, their historical background and composition (Brandt and
Stark (1997), vii–cli, and Wood (2013), 1–10). Due to restrictions of space, I refer to them for a
presentation of Kant’s Lectures as well as to Werner Stark’s contribution in this volume. See also
Lestition (1985), 752–66; Brandt and Stark (1997), vii–cli; and Wilson (2006), 7–26 for a presentation
of the lectures and their reception, and Zammito (2002), 293–302; and Wilson (1991) for an account
of their genesis.
2 See also ‘This knowledge of the world serves to procure the pragmatic element for all otherwise
acquired sciences and skills, by means of which they become useful not merely for the school but
rather for life and through which the accomplished apprentice is introduced to the stage of his destiny,
namely, the world’ (VvRM 2:443). As Lestition summed up, Kant intended his lecture course to
‘provide a sort of “plan” or “general knowledge” which facilitates a subsequent broadening of the
factual learning acquired at school, and to stimulate a broader reading public – that is, amateurs who
enjoyed cultural concerns – to reflect upon the suitability of any given set of ordering principles for
the study of men as they exist in the world’ (Lestition (1989), 757).
3 Quoted in Jacobs and Kain (2003b), 13. As Kuehn notes, ‘the lectures on anthropology . . . were to
become the most accessible of all his lectures. While students dreaded his lectures on logic and
1
2 Alix Cohen
Their popularity led students to produce transcripts that were traded and
handed down from year to year, and they eventually formed the basis of
the published Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View in 1798.
Yet their legacy was short-lived and since then they have been largely
ignored.4 On the few occasions they have been mentioned, they were
deemed a peculiar collection of more or less pointless remarks on a variety
of random topics vaguely related to human beings – starting from Schleier-
macher’s 1799 review, which describes the Anthropology as a ‘collection of
trivialities’ (Schleiermacher (1998), 16).5 This disappointing reception can
be partly accounted for by their often unexpected, at times odd, and occa-
sionally incongruous character. Their subject matter ranges from enter-
tainment to marriage, bodily functions, fashion, humour, sex, smoking
and sleeping patterns – topics that seem a far cry from Kant’s more famil-
iar transcendental concerns.6 Moreover, the most charitable interpretative
tools have remained powerless in the face of his repeated discussions of
human races, gender differences or national characteristics, where stereo-
typing, prejudice and bigotry abound.7 As a result, until recently, the
Lectures on Anthropology have generally been viewed as peculiar, uncritical
metaphysics, they seem genuinely to have enjoyed his lectures on anthropology’ (Kuehn (2001),
204–5).
4 Similarly, Kant’s anthropological work has received only superficial attention within the history and
philosophy of the social sciences. This is partly due to the fact that it has not been perceived as being
in continuity with the discipline as social scientists know it. As Brandt has noted, ‘The Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View remained a stray piece in the history of sciences’ (Brandt (1999), 43).
Similarly for Zammito, ‘There is reason to question whether Kant’s vision of what anthropology
as a discipline should become had any sustained impact on the subsequent development of that
field. I have taken the view that it was far less influential than rival versions – both at home and
abroad’ (Zammito, this volume, 248; see also Zammito (2002), 301 ff.). As Barnard sums up from
the perspective of the history of anthropology, ‘While Lévi-Strauss once argued that Rousseau was
the founder of the social sciences, Radcliffe-Brown gave that honour to Montesquieu; and the
styles of the later structuralist and structural-functionalist traditions do owe much to the respective
rationalism of Rousseau and empiricism of Montesquieu’ (Barnard (2000), 23).
5 Amongst many others, Hinske argued that for Kant, anthropology is ‘a science of questionable
thoroughness and [therefore] subordinate’ (Hinske (1961), 410); Kaag talked about it as one of
‘Kant’s lesser works’ (Kaag (2005), 535); and Eze often referred to its ‘peculiar nature’ (Eze (1997),
105); whilst for Brandt, they do not belong ‘to philosophy in a strict sense’ (Brandt (1999), 7).
6 Respectively in VA-Friedländer 25:568–9, 25:703, 25:706, VA-Mrongovius 25:1247–8, 25:1328–9, VA-
Friedländer 25:518–9, 25:601, 25:714, VA-Mrongovius 25:1336, VA-Friedländer 25:528.
7 The lectures on anthropology are not alone in this unfortunate position. As far as stereotyping
is concerned, it occurs in other lecture notes, including the Lectures on Geography, as well as the
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, the essays Of the Different Races of Human
Beings, On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, and Determination of the Concept of a
Human Race, and of course the published version of the lectures on anthropology, the Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View. For a nuanced and insightful analysis of the relationship between
Kant’s views on race and the rest of his philosophy, see Frierson (2013), 104–7. See also Eze (1995);
Larrimore (1999); Louden (2000), 93–106; Boxill and Hill (2001).
Introduction 3
and possibly anomalous works that do not belong to the Kantian system
as such.
However, since the publication of the Lectures on Anthropology in the
German Academy edition of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften (1997), the new
English translation of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
(CUP, 2006) and the publication of the volume Anthropology, History and
Education (CUP, 2007), this situation has started to change. In the Anglo-
American tradition for instance, the first substantial works dedicated to
Kant’s anthropology date from the year 2000, with Robert Louden’s Kant’s
Impure Ethics; 2002, with John Zammito’s Kant, Herder, and the Birth of
Anthropology; and 2003, with Patrick Frierson’s Freedom and Anthropology
in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, as well as Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain’s Essays
on Kant’s Anthropology.8 Since then, studies have multiplied, including
Wilson (2006), Cohen (2009a) and Sturm (2009). This surge of attention
among Kant scholars has finally established the Lectures on Anthropology as
worthy of study in their own right and hence makes the appearance of this
Critical Guide very timely.
This collection of essays sets out to offer the first comprehensive assess-
ment of Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology, their philosophical importance,
their evolution and their relationship to his critical philosophy. It is based
on the belief that they lie at the intersection of many core Kantian concerns
and thus offer an ideal standpoint for the exploration of a wide range of
topics, from the epistemological and the psychological to the moral and
cultural. The thematic approach of the Critical Guide series is particularly
well suited to the Lectures, for it enables the emergence of common themes
from what may appear at first to be disparate areas of anthropological dis-
course. But before summarising individual contributions, I would like to
show that, taken in its entirety, this volume provides us with a whole range
of reasons why paying close attention to the Lectures on Anthropology will
enrich current debates within Kant scholarship.
First, the Lectures contribute to our understanding of the overall evo-
lution of Kant’s thought. As the lecture course that Kant gave most fre-
quently (from 1772–3 to 1795–6), and as one of the few texts available from
Kant’s ‘silent decade’ (1771–81), they provide a record that is extremely
useful in understanding the development of his views and in tracking their
evolution. For instance, Susan Shell’s detailed analysis of the Friedländer
Lectures (1775–6) shows that a crucial shift takes place in this period. Kant’s
8 This is apart from Van de Pitte’s relatively anecdotal Kant as Philosophical Anthropologist (1971),
which offered an early study of Kant’s anthropological project. For studies in other languages, see for
instance Foucault (2008); Firla (1981); Manganoro (1983); Kim (1992); Ferrari (1997); Potesta (2004).
4 Alix Cohen
confident defence of vitalism, which takes the form of the unity of the
biological and the moral is, according to her, one of the last remnants
of his pre-critical commitments, soon after to be dropped as transcen-
dental idealism emerges. Rudolf Makkreel’s contribution also brings to
light shifts that show an important transformation in Kant’s thinking,
from the early suggestion that we can intuit ourselves to the later claim
that self-observation is fraught with difficulties. Likewise, Patrick Frierson
observes striking changes in Kant’s account of affects and passions. On this
basis he argues that, from his early lectures right through to the Anthro-
pology, Kant increasingly differentiates between them and their respective
moral valuations. For his part, John Zammito deplores the lack of system-
atic integration of Kant’s critical philosophy with his anthropology. The
‘Anthropological Characteristics’ section of the Lectures is remarkably stable
in spite of changes both in his critical philosophy and in the wider anthro-
pological discourse over the same period, which he interprets as a failure on
Kant’s part. Paul Guyer analyses the development of Kant’s thought on the
inclination to freedom, and concludes that his mature idea about freedom
is not reflected in the Lectures on Anthropology of the period. Accounting
for these discrepancies helps us make better sense of the unique point of
view the Lectures adopt. This needs further elucidations since the use of
the term ‘pragmatic’ to qualify Kant’s anthropological project has been the
subject of recent debates.
The intended function of the Lectures is to provide ‘knowledge of
the world’ – knowledge that Kant calls ‘pragmatic’ from the Friedländer
Lectures (1775–6) onwards.9 For some commentators, the realm of the
pragmatic is merely coextensive with happiness, prudence and skill, includ-
ing the use of others to achieve our ends; for others it can include the realm
of the moral.10 The difficulty in demarcating its legitimate boundaries is a
particular instance of a more general tension within Kant’s transcendental
framework, between his metaphysics, his account of freedom in particular,
and his anthropology.11 The possibility of the reconciliation, if not the
integration, of Kant’s anthropological work with the rest of his corpus
is thus an ongoing task, and one to which this volume contributes in
9 ‘The second part of knowledge of the world is knowledge of human beings, who are considered
inasmuch as their knowledge is of interest to us in life. Therefore human beings are not studied
in speculative terms, but pragmatic, in the application of their knowledge according to rules of
prudence, and this is anthropology’ (VA-Friedländer 25:470).
10 For the former, see Wood (1999), 203–5, Brandt (2003), 92; for the latter, see Frierson (2003), 80;
Stark (2003), 21; and Cohen (2009a), 62.
11 See Gregor (1974), xvii, 5; Wood (1999), 206; Louden (2000), 19; Jacobs and Kain (2003a); Cohen
(2009b), 114; Sturm (2011).
Introduction 5
significant ways. Insofar as they are Kant’s ‘anthropologising’ in action,
the Lectures contain an abundance of vivid, sometimes perplexing, but
often instructive examples of what he has in mind when he talks about
pragmatic anthropology as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting
being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself ’ (A 7:119).12 For
instance, as Gary Hatfield argues in his contribution, even the theoretical
knowledge of the senses has a pragmatic function for Kant. Not only does
he advise his students on how to use them, from choosing the colour of
their clothes to cultivating the ability to overlook blemishes, he also shows
that understanding how the senses work can help correct our unguided
phenomenological impression of the direction of causation in vision
(Hatfield (2014)). In this respect at least, anthropological knowledge is, if
not essential, then at least helpful to the realisation of human endeavours,
no matter how modest. This is why it is often described as map: ‘a moral
map that [human beings] can use to move toward their collective destiny’
(Louden (2000), 106), ‘a map-making venture’ (Cohen (2009a), 105). Yet
Zammito (this volume, 246) raises doubts about its supposed usefulness:
it is ‘almost a contemplative (academic?) wisdom, [rather than] a guide
for action (in the world)’. His conclusion that Kant’s Lectures seemed
‘rather a vehicle for Kant to exercise his categorising propensity’ (this
volume, 239) will no doubt appeal to many reluctant readers of Kant.
However, beyond the issue of the immediate value of Kant’s particular
anthropological recommendations, what is at stake in accounting for the
function of the Lectures on Anthropology as a whole is the determination of
their systematic connections with his critical philosophy. Some contribu-
tions in this volume emphasise the discrepancies between Kant’s account
in the Lectures and his critical philosophy. For instance, Catherine Wil-
son brings to light the paradoxes that are at the basis of Kant’s thoughts
about human nature as it develops historically and anthropologically. She
claims that whilst his moral philosophy defends the normative demands
of humanity as an end in itself, the account of human nature presented
in the Lectures praises conflict, civil coercion and discipline as necessary
for the progress of civilisation. Other contributions argue in favour of the
complementarity of the Lectures with Kant’s other writings. G. Felicitas
12 As one of his students notes, ‘His oral presentation was simple and without affection. In Physical
geography and in anthropology he was lively. The former had a more general appeal, and it was well
suited to his talent as a story-teller. The latter gained from his incidental observations of minute
details either drawn from his own experience or from his readings – especially from that of the best
English novelists. One never left his lectures without having learned something, or without having
been pleasantly entertained’ (quoted in Kuehn (2001), 274).
6 Alix Cohen
Munzel shows how reading them alongside each other allows us to see the
continuity and development of his account of human nature, whether in
its moral or cognitive dimensions. She argues, for instance, that whilst the
former identify the problem of establishing and appropriately using the
principles of judgment in relation to the world in which human beings
find themselves, the articulation of the appropriate principles and their use
is the ongoing work of the critical philosophy.
Going further in this direction, the Lectures on Anthropology contribute
to our understanding of Kant’s philosophy as a system in crucial ways.
First by enabling us to flesh out its empirical dimension, a dimension
that is usually understated, if at all present, in the rest of the corpus, they
provide an opportunity to consider issues that remain relatively underex-
plored within Kant’s thought – as Patrick Frierson shows for the nature
of affective states, or Gary Hatfield illustrates for the role of the senses.13
Furthermore, as Janowiak and Watkins note, Kant’s primary goal in the
first Critique is not to offer a comprehensive account of cognition in
general but merely to explain its necessary a priori structures. The Lec-
tures are thus, they contend, an invaluable resource for attaining a fuller
understanding of Kant’s larger project. By accounting for the contingent,
empirical modes in which our faculties operate, they illuminate Kant’s
understanding of the operations and functions of the human mind and
thereby supplement the transcendental account presented in the Critique
of Pure Reason. More generally, they offer untapped resources for those
interested in everyday cognition, perception and philosophical psychol-
ogy. They also contribute to the ongoing re-evaluation of Kant’s practical
philosophy. As Allen Wood argues, they comprise an account of affec-
tive states according to which they differ from each other in important
respects, and these differences have implications for their relationship to
reason, deliberation and value. In particular, Kant’s supposed hostility to
the emotions in the Groundwork sits uneasily with the account of feelings
presented here since the latter comprise rational valuations. In addition,
Robert Louden claims that Kant’s anthropological assumptions have crucial
ethical implications. First, Kant’s exclusion of happiness from humanity’s
biological development explains his opposition to utilitarianism in ethics,
since moral theories that encourage humans to aim directly at happi-
ness contradict nature’s plan for the species. Second, it is because nature’s
13 As Kain and Jacobs have noted in the Introduction to the Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, ‘Kant’s
anthropology lectures present the acting and knowing subject as fully constituted in human flesh
and blood, with the specific virtues and foibles that make it properly human’ (Jacobs and Kain
(2003b), 6).
Introduction 7
distribution of the drive to work is uneven that he is committed to the
claim that some peoples have the necessary inherent drives to progress and
others do not.
Needless to say, I could list many more reasons to read Kant’s Lectures
on Anthropology. But I hope that the ones I have listed here will suffice
to entice the reader to delve into this volume as well as into the Lectures
themselves.
Whilst the volume engages with the central issues raised in the Lectures,
exhaustiveness is impossible, as is unavoidable for such collections, and
a number of issues are too briefly covered, if at all. For instance, Kant’s
treatments of race, gender or mental disorders, although discussed, have
no thorough treatment here.14 The structure of the volume mirrors that
of the Anthropology and the Lectures on Anthropology themselves, starting
from the Didactic, which tackles the cognitive faculty, the feeling of plea-
sure and displeasure and the faculty of desire, followed by the Anthro-
pological Characteristics, with issues including education, culture and
cosmopolitanism.
In ‘Self-cognition and self-assessment’, Rudolf Makkreel engages with
the limits of introspective self-observation by examining the compensatory
approaches that allow us to become aware of ourselves. He concludes that
self-cognition is not learning what inner sense has passively assimilated but
determining what reason can actively appropriate as part of a project of
self-assessment and character formation.
In ‘Kant on the phenomenology of touch and vision’, Gary Hatfield sets
out to situate Kant’s remarks on touch and vision within the context of his
pragmatic anthropology. He concludes that Kant’s method of observation
is drawn from everyday life, a kind of everyday phenomenology of sen-
sory experience that partly relies on the theoretical apparatus of empirical
psychology. Such intermixture of ‘school learning’ and theory with obser-
vations drawn from life is, he believes, characteristic of Kant’s writing and
lectures in anthropology.
In ‘Meat on the bones: Kant’s account of cognition in the anthropology
lectures’, Tim Jankowiak and Eric Watkins examine Kant’s discussion of
the empirical features of cognition in the Lectures on Anthropology and
show that they add content to the view of cognition that emerges from
the first Critique. Thus if the first Critique describes a bare-bones skeleton
14 Kant’s treatments of race, gender and mental disorders are discussed respectively in Louden, Shell,
Wilson and Zammito, Cohen and Wilson, and Janowiak and Watkins. For extensive discussions of
these issues, see Eze (1995); Kleingeld (2007); Larrimore (1999); Shell (1996); Schott (1997); Mikkola
(2011); David-Ménard (2000); Makkreel (2001b); and Frierson (2009) respectively.
8 Alix Cohen
of some of the necessary conditions of a priori cognition, Kant’s Lectures
puts a healthy amount of empirical meat on the bones of his a priori
account.
In ‘The anthropology of cognition and its pragmatic implications’, I
argue that it is because of our cognitive nature as embodied human beings
that we need not only a critique of pure reason, but also an anthropology of
empirical reason – a pragmatic account of how we can, should and ought to
cognise insofar as we are embodied human beings. The function of Kant’s
anthropology of cognition is thus to illuminate the empirical, contingent
and messy features of human cognition in order to help us become better,
more efficient knowers.
In ‘Affects and passions’, Patrick Frierson argues that to make sense of
Kant’s claim that passions can only be conquered with difficulty whilst
affects do not allow reflection (A 7:251), we need to provide a psychological
account that explains them in terms of feeling and inclination. He con-
cludes that passions are disordered inclinations while affects are disordered
feelings.
Paul Guyer’s contribution focuses on ‘The inclination towards freedom’
and its cultivation. His question is whether and when the development of
Kant’s central idea in moral philosophy became reflected in his Lectures on
Anthropology. He argues that while Kant asserted the existence of a powerful
inclination to one’s own freedom as the condition of the possibility of one’s
own happiness early in the anthropology lectures, it was only later that he
introduced the idea that freedom is more than this.
In ‘Empirical desire’, Allen Wood proposes a taxonomy of our affective
states, including desire, inclination, feeling, passion and affect. On this
basis, he argues that Kant’s treatment of empirical desire in the Lectures on
Anthropology emphasises the way these desires pose an obstacle to rational
self-government. He concludes that an affect is an excess of feeling that
temporarily overwhelms our rational self-control, while passion is empirical
desire, developed and modified by free choice.
In ‘Kant as “vitalist”: The “principium of life” in Anthropologie
Friedländer’, Susan Shell provides a detailed analysis of the Anthropolo-
gie Friedländer through the prism of the concept of vitalism. She shows
that it defends a conception of pragmatic anthropology that can unite the
higher principles of activity and the lower principles of life, in contrast to
Kant’s mature conception of the dichotomy between reason and nature.
Yet, she argues, this account of their relation is only provisional, soon
replaced by an account of spontaneity that offers no apparent means of
reconciliation between them.
Introduction 9
In ‘Indispensable education of the being of reason and speech’, G.
Felicitas Munzel argues that the cultivation of reason is intrinsic to the very
nature of the being of reason and speech. She bases her interpretation on
the analysis of three sections of the Friedländer Lectures: ‘On the Use of
Reason with Regard to the Practical’, ‘On the Character of Humanity in
General’, and ‘On Education’.
In ‘Kant on civilisation, culture and moralisation’, Catherine Wilson
explores Kant’s account of civilisation, culture and moralisation from the
perspective of three issues, namely secularisation, animalism and historical
pessimism. Whilst Kant is a proponent of secularisation, she argues, he
rejects animalism and the historical pessimism that often accompany it, and
this sets him apart in the wider context of the emergence of anthropology
as a discipline in the eighteenth century.
In ‘Cosmopolitical unity: the final destiny of the human species’, Robert
Louden focuses on Kant’s account of the character of the human species and
in particular humanity’s predisposition toward what he calls ‘cosmopolitical
unity’. He shows that Kant is far from naive about the inherent difficulties
of establishing cosmopolitical unity, and that in this sense, he is not overly
optimistic regarding humanity’s future.
In ‘What a young man needs for his venture into the world: the func-
tion and evolution of the “Characteristics”’, John Zammito analyses the
‘Anthropological Characteristics’ section of the Lectures on Anthropology
and concludes that in spite of slight changes of emphasis (in partic-
ular between predictability as a measure enabling effective negotiation
with others and accountability as a measure of approval or disapproval of
others), the invariance of Kant’s pedagogical purpose permitted its relative
stability.
cha pter 1
Kant’s lectures on anthropology:

some orienting remarks
Werner Stark
Translated by Joshua Mendelsohn
Thanks to the diligence of Königsberg students and coincidences regarding

the text’s transmission, we have access to two largely independent sets of
notes from Kant’s first semester-long course of lectures on anthropology
(1772–3). Allusions and direct citations in the text attest in multiple ways
to the influence of the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, particularly of
Émile and the Second Discourse.1 Wherever one finds Kant’s method of
a structured, even constructed, lecture, decisive points of contact with
Rousseau become apparent. This is especially clear in the ‘Introductions’,
which can also be read as a programmatic presentation of the course
structure. As a teacher, Kant constantly strives to deliver what he promises.
In the Collins transcript, we read:
[1] We will consider the human mind in all its conditions, in health and
in sickness, in a confused and uncultivated condition, to establish the first
principles [principien] of taste and the adjudication of the beautiful, the
principles [principien] of pathology, sensitivity and inclinations. [2] We will
mention the different ages and especially the sexes in their character, and
seek to draw them from their sources. [3] From this will follow what is
natural to the human being and what is artificial or habitual about him;
that will be [a] the most difficult and our chief object, to distinguish the
human being insofar as he is natural from the human being as he has been
transformed by upbringing and other influences, [b] to consider the mind
separated from the body, and [c] to seek, mediated by observations, whether
the influence of the body is necessarily required for thinking. (VA-Collins
25:8 f.)2
1 Cf. Stark (2014). Due to the nature of the subject matter, some correspondence with formulations
used in the present essay was unavoidable.
2 The bracketed numbers and letters which I have introduced are to be understood as follows: the first
part follows Baumgarten’s textbook, Metaphysica, Pars ii, Caput i: Psychologia empirica §§504–739.
The second part of the lecture proceeds without reference to the Metaphysica; its construction is
reminiscent of Kant’s 1764 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Third, a broader
project is pursued, which permeates the entire text, arguing (a) for and against Rousseau, (b) and
(c) against Ernst Platner and others (cf. C 10:145, A 7:119, 176, VA 25:085, 472, 856, 1211). The
10
Kant’s lectures on anthropology: some orienting remarks 11
Indicating the course structure considerably less, Parow writes:
In treating this doctrine we want to discuss human beings in different con-
ditions, e.g. in uncultivated and uncivilised [roh und ungesittet] conditions,
in accordance with their different ages, and to distinguish what is natural
and artificial [Natur und Kunst] in a human being. (VA-Parow 25:244)
Both formulations bear clear witness to the concept of ‘natural man’ intro-
duced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Second Discourse. This refers neither
to the thought experiment of man in a fictional ‘state of nature’, as in Locke
or Hobbes, for example, nor to a scientific reconstruction of prehistoric
human beings. Rather, Rousseau assumes that his ‘natural or savage man’
is equipped with the same senses and natural attributes as an infant born in
his own day. Kant follows this approach in his Anthropology, but over time,
the results and conclusions he draws from it become increasingly distant
from its inventor’s approach. In short, we might put the point by saying
that Kant took Rousseau to have posed the right question, but not to have
given the right answer.
From the start, Kant’s lectures on anthropology are divided into two
parts. After a short, programmatic introduction, there follows first an
empirical psychology modeled after the third part of Baumgarten’s Meta-
physica (cf. Baumgarten (2011)). However, Kant’s structuring assumption
of three different ‘capacities’ (Vermögen) occurs neither in Baumgarten’s
Metaphysics nor in his Ethics (Heinz (2011)).3 Kant holds that every per-
son is capable of (a) knowing, (b) feeling and (c) desiring. Connected by
a superordinate or preordinate self-consciousness, these three capabilities
form the ‘soul’ or interior of the human being.
For the initially untitled second part (later dubbed the ‘Characteris-
tics’), there is no textbook precedent.4 As far as we can tell, Sectio xxii
relationship between the soul and the body (Metaphysica §§733–9) is not treated. It should also be
mentioned that (c) relies on passages from Dreams of a Spirit Seer (2:370–3). For the corresponding
reference to the field of medicine, see the earlier notes of Collins (VA-Collins 25:218), and Parow
(VA-Parow 25:436). Pillau (1777–8) and Menschenkunde (1781–2) give some hints as to the disease-like
phenomena that appear at the interface of body and soul (VA-Pillau 25:813–4, VA-Menschenkunde
25:1156). More extensive evidence is given by Friedländer (1775–6) and Mrongovius (1784–5) (VA-
Friedländer 25:624–6, VA-Mrongovius 25:1364–7).
3 The newly posed question of the origin of the three basic faculties (knowing, feeling and desiring)
of the first part of the lectures foreshadows the questions of the Critiques, first published between
1781 and 1790. Pure reason is directed towards the true, practical reason investigates the good, and
the Critique of the Power of Judgment contains a doctrine of taste or aesthetic as its first part – its
interest is in the beautiful and the sublime. The last Critique in particular refers the matter to the
1764, entirely world-oriented Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
4 First in the transcript of Pillau, dated from 1777–8: ‘The Characteristic. It serves to distinguish the
characters (Charactère). Character means nothing other than a general mark to distinguish people’
(VA-Pillau 25:814; my translation).
12 Werner Stark
(‘commercium animae et corporis’) of the Metaphysica seems to have served
as the occasion for Kant to broaden his discussion. The proximity of this
discussion to medicine functions to bridge the presentation of two tradi-
tional, associated theories:5 a theory of temperaments, which distinguishes
between sanguines, phlegmatics, melancholics and cholerics, and a polem-
ically argued physiognomy. Finally, two other manifest human differences
are treated. The characters of the genders (man/woman) are treated from
the outset like the different nations of Europe.6 To use a modern turn of
phrase, the second part of the lecture could be described on the whole as
‘differential psychology’.7 From the mid-1770s, variously executed but sim-
ilarly intentioned presentations of this sort came to conclude and climax
in an attempt to characterise the human species as a whole. This internal
development,8 which is also reflected in novel terminology, includes Kant’s
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798).
The Anthropology lecture was first delivered in the winter of 1772–3, so
that, at least temporally, it stood in close proximity to Kant’s adoption
of the professorship in logic and metaphysics. A glance over the basic
curriculum of the reformed universities in the German-speaking territories
quickly makes clear that, just like at the beginning of his academic career as
a Privatdozent in the winter of 1755–6, Kant gives a lecture that does not fall
within any of the canonical philosophical subjects (Scheible (1997)).9 Thus,
besides the lecture on ‘physical geography’ first held in the summer of 1756,
there appears a second, similarly private, lecture, which was, however,
always held in the winter months, the anthropology lecture. From the
outset, it was made clear to students that the lectures on anthropology in
5 Cf. footnote 2 above.
6 At the same time, Kant refrains from making observations about Europeans in the lectures on
Physical Geography held from 1756; the inhabitants of the other continents remain present, despite
significant abbreviations. Cf. Stark (2010); Stark (2011).
7 In the received transcripts, the second part always has a significantly smaller extent than the part
devoted to empirical psychology. The percentage devoted to ‘characteristics’ in each of them is,
respectively: Collins: 10 per cent; Parow: 20 per cent; Friedlaender: 40 per cent; Pillau: 28 per cent;
Menschenkunde: 10 per cent; Mrongovius: 25 per cent; Reichel: 25 per cent; Naumburg: 28 per
cent. The corresponding amount in the edition published by Kant in 1798 is 23 per cent. The
Friedländer transcript from the mid-1770s, which is especially noteworthy in this respect, presents
(like the notes of Prieger transmitted in parallel) its own section ‘On education [von der Erziehung]’
(VA- Friedländer 25:722–8). The subject matter may be assumed to correspond to a lecture ‘Collegio
scholastico practicum’ first held by Kant in the winter of 1776–7. This section has not yet been traced
back to the lecture, which has been established as an official duty for the Philosophical Faculty on 13
July 1774.
8 For example, talk of ‘progress’ (Fortschritt) first occurs in the mid-1770s. Cf. Kant (2004), 365 (#240).
9 Of the eight ordinary professors who had usually belonged to the philosophy faculty of the Königsberg
Albertina since its foundation in 1544, in Kant’s time only two could strictly speaking be called
‘philosophical’: (1) logic and metaphysics, (2) ethics and natural law, (3) eloquence and history, (4)
poetry, (5) the Greek language, (6) oriental languages, (7) mathematics and (8) physics. On this, see
also Oberhausen and Pozzo (1999).
no way constituted a separate treatment of some specific branch of the
Metaphysics, but rather were to be understood as a fledgling field of inquiry
in their own right. As a later student account puts it,
If one uses anthropology for social intercourse, it becomes knowledge of the
world. We can use it every day in conversations, practical affairs, and with
regard to ourselves [in Ansehung unserer selbst], and through new observations
we can illustrate it more and more. No one has yet treated anthropology from
such a perspective, namely, as knowledge of the world, and Herr Professor
Kant is the first to have made a plan of it and to have lectured on it in his
courses. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1211)
Without going further into the internal structure of what was, viewed as a
whole, a novel field of study,10 we can still say without any doubt that Kant
is drawing on a broad, contemporary European literature. A range of pri-
marily English and French authors are referred to or explicitly mentioned,
including Joseph Addison; Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux; Edmund Burke;
Philipp Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Henry Fielding; Bernard
Le Bouyer de Fontenelle; Alexander Gerard; Claude Adrien Helvétius;
Henry Home, Lord Kames; François de La Rochefoucauld; John Milton;
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; Alexander Pope; Anthony Ashley Cooper,
third Earl of Shaftesbury; William Shakespeare; Laurence Sterne; Jonathan
Swift; François Marie Arouet de Voltaire; and Edward Young.11 The vast
majority of these are authors of the eighteenth century.
From the works of these authors I would like to highlight one title, in
which the de facto motto of this new science is contained, although to be
sure Kant never quotes it. Perhaps the best-known line of Alexander Pope’s
Essay on Man reads: ‘The proper study of mankind is Man’ (quoted in
Brockes (1740)).12 In contrast to what has been assumed in previous Kant
10 The doctrine of taste enters the anthropology lectures in place of sectio viii, ‘iudicum’ (Metaphysica,
§§606–9). This theory inserted here is treated in connection with sectio XV, ‘voluptas et taedium’
(§§656–62). According to it, it belongs (in Baumgarten’s systematic) to the realm of the facultas
appetitiva (§§651–732) and not only to the facultas cognoscitiva (§§519–650). Cf. VA-Collins 25:174–
204, VA-Parow 25:374–402. The discussion in the Logik-Philippi provides a helpful supplementary
reconstruction of the Kantian doctrine of taste at the beginning of the 1770s (VL-Philippi 24:344–53).
11 Cf. the bibliography and index of names in Ak 25.
12 The edition offers the parallel texts of the ‘Essay on Man’ in German and English. Only the English
text on the left contains a line numbering running through each epistle. The beginning of the
second epistle, ‘Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to Himself as an Individual’ (rendered
by Brockes as ‘Von der Natur und dem Zustande des Menschen in Ansehung auf sich und als einzeln
Wesen betrachtet’) reads: ‘Know then thy self, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of
mankind is Man [p. 33: So lerne dich selbst erkennen, und bilde dir so keck nicht ein: / Es werde
gar die Gottheit selbst von deinem Geist entwickelt seyn. / Der Menschen Untersuchungs-Vorwurf
ist eigentlich der Mensch allein].’ The dry precision of the English original has been lost. On the
relationship of the German translation in this edition to possible previous sources, see Lessing
(1972), 790; and Keipert (2006).
14 Werner Stark
scholarship, which supposes at least an occasional reliance on the English-
or French-language original,13 I think it can be said on the basis of the
range of textual evidence deriving from Kant’s lectures on anthropology
and physical geography that this was not the case.14
The early Kantian writing Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens contains four verse citations of the 1740 Brockes translation.15
Three come from the first epistle and one from the third:
First epistle: Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the Universe.
(Brockes (1740), 2–31)
p. 4. ‘or can a part contain the whole? Is the great Chain that draws all to
agree,’16
p. 10. ‘Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate, / All but the page
prescrib’d their present state’17
pp. 24 f. ‘Vast chain of Being! Which from God began, / Natures aethereal,
human, angel, man, / Beast, bird, fish, insect! What no eye can see, / No
glass can reach! From Infinite to thee, / From thee to Nothing!’18
p. 34. ‘Superior Beings, when of late they saw / A mortal man unfold
all Nature’s law, / Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape/ And shew’d
Newton as we show an Ape.’19
13 As Schlapp writes on Pope: ‘Apparently Kant’s favourite poet. From the considerations above, we can
conclude that he must surely have read Pope in the original’ (Schlapp (1901), 70; my translation).
Schlapp refers to the following Logic notes from 1772: ‘A timit rhyme-poet, and utmost despised;
but with what joy one reads the verses of Pope when the rhymes seem natural and to have flowed
from the subject matter itself’ (VL-Philippi 24:371; my translation). See also Schlapp (1901), 422.
14 The first volume of the lectures on Physical Geography published in 2009 (V-PG 26.1) does not
contain a student transcription of an oral lecture but rather Kant’s own drafts. Extensive research
into the textual references contained in student notes from the years 1770 to 1792 lends further
support to the findings that had already been established in Ak 25 in 1997. Kant familiarised himself
with the European literature of his day via recent German translations.
15 ‘Pope in Brockes’s Translation’ (AN 1:318). Although the citations in Kant’s text do not correspond
word for word, there can be no doubt that they are based on Brockes’s edition and translation.
16 ‘Ist diese große Wunder-Kette, die alle Theile dieser Welt / Vereinet und zusammen zieht, und die
das große Ganz erhält’ (AN 1:241; Brockes (1740), 5).
17 ‘Gott will, es soll des Schicksals Buch, der Creatur verborgen seyn, / Die Pagina der Gegenwart,
entdeckt sich ihnen bloß allein’ (AN 1:318; Brockes (1740), 11). Cited again in the Collins transcript
from the first semester of the Anthropology lecture of 1772–3 (VA-Collins 25:121): ‘Gott will, es soll
das Schicksals Buch mir verborgen seyn, die pagina der Gegenwart entdeckt sie mir allein. Pope.
[God wills it, the book of fate shall be hidden from me, only the page of the present reveals it to
me; my translation]’.
18 ‘Welch eine Kette, die von Gott den Anfang nimmt! was vor Naturen, / Von himmlischen und
irdischen! der Engel, und der Mensch, das Vieh, / Die Vögel, Fisch und das Gewürm! O Weite,
die das Auge nie, / Und ja so wenig die Gesichts-Kunst, erreichen und betrachten kann / Von dem
Unendlichen zu Dir von Dir zum Nichts!’ (AN 1:365; Brockes (1740), 25 f.).
19 ‘Wie jüngst die obern Wesen sahn, / Was unlängst recht verwunderlich, / Ein Sterblicher bey uns
gethan, / Und wie er der Natur Gesetz entfaltet; wunderten sie sich, / Daß, durch ein irdisches
Third epistle: Of the nature and State of Man, with respect to Society.
(Brockes (1740), 58–85)
p. 58. ‘See, plastic Nature working to this end, / The single atoms each to
other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place, form’d and impell’d, its
neighbour to embrace. / See matter next, with various life endu’d, / Press to
one centre, still, the gen’ral good’.20
It has only recently been recognised (Brandt (2007)) that these quotations
are in no way arbitrarily chosen as poetical adornments for the decoration
of a serious scientific pursuit, but rather express a basic agreement with
the central goals of the four-part ‘Essay on Man’, which is likewise to be
attributed to British physico-theology (Waschkies (1987)).21 In any event,
the surviving notes of the young Kant on a prize essay22 of the francophone
Berlin (that is, Prussian) Académie royale des sciences et belles lettres plainly
bear the marks of Pope’s influence.23 In two other early works as well Kant
refers approvingly to Pope’s essay.24
Geschöpf, dergleichen möglich, zu geschehn, / Und sahen unsern Newton an, so wie wir einen
Affen sehn’ (AN 1:360; Brockes (1740), 35).
20 ‘Schau sich die bildende Natur zu ihrem großen Zweck bewegen, / Ein jedes Sonnenstäubchen
sich, nach einem andern Stäubchen, regen, / Ein jedes, das gezogen wird, ein anders wieder an sich
ziehn, / Das nächste wieder zu umfassen, es zu formieren sich bemühn. / Beschaue die Materie auf
tausend Art und Weise sich / Zum allgemeinen Centro drängen, ihr allgemeines Gut’ (AN 1:259;
Brockes (1740), 59).
21 See also Kreimendahl and Oberhausen in their edition of Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer
Demonstration des Daseins Gottes (Kant (2011), especially xxxii–xlii and 221–3).
22 The beginning of the prize question reads, ‘We ask for an examination of Pope’s system as contained
in the proposition “all is right”’ (‘On demande l’examen du système de Pope contenu dans la
proposition: Tout est bien’), cited by Lessing (1972), 787. For understanding Kant’s intentions at
this this early stage, Mendelsohn and Lessing’s Pope ein Metaphysiker, anonymously published in
Danzig in 1755, is indispensible. The prize essay of the academy aims for a critique of ‘optimism’
after Leibniz’s 1710 Theodizee.
23 Handschriftlicher Nachlaß 17:229–39, R 3703, 3704, 3705 (α1 /1753–4). The first of these reflections
contains, according to the editor Erich Adickes, ‘a reproduction of the train of thought of the fourth
epistle of Al. Pope’s Essay on Man (from roughly the 75th verse)’ (17:229; my translation). See also
Brandt (2007), 200–2.
24 Gedanken bei dem frühzeitigen Ableben des Hochwohlgebornen Herrn, Herrn Johann Friedrich von
Funk (1760) (2:042); Brockes (1740), 10–11: ‘That each may fill the circle mark’d by heav’n’ (‘Daß
jeder seinen Kreis vollende, den ihm der Himmel ausersehn’). The Only Possible Argument in Support
of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763) (Em 2:137); Brockes (1740), 34–5: ‘Go, teach Eternal
Wisdom how to rule – then drop into thy-self, and be a fool!’ (‘Geh, schreibe Gottes ewger Weisheit
des Regimentes Regeln vor, / Denn kehre wieder in dich selbst zuletzt zurück, und sey ein Thor!’).
Kant’s high opinion of the Essay on Man persists into the Anthropology, but here, if I understand the
matter, it only applies to the poetry and the poet himself. Thus in the Friedländer notes, we find
the following: ‘However, to bring virtue and its sensations into a harmonious play is meritorious,
for it is something intellectual, and to make this intuitable is truly meritorious, for example Pope’s
Essay on Man’ (VA-Friedländer 25:527). Further mentions of Alexander Pope can be found in the
following lectures: 25:121, 137, 190, 202, 345, 399, 455, 1059, 1178, 1190, 1232, 1265, 1378. See also A
7:210, 267, 305.
16 Werner Stark
The view of the human being associated with physical theology does,
however, offer a striking contrast to the alternative ‘determination of man’
formulated from the beginning in the lectures on anthropology. As quoted
in the first letter, in Pope the human being appears as a link in a long chain
of divine creatures, placed in between the higher angels and the lower cattle
(i.e. other animals). This is more pronounced in Albert Haller’s 1734 poem
‘On the origin of evil’:
Our mortal race, far below these celestial spirits, partakes equally of
divinity and baseness: composed of two different natures, destined partly to
immortality / partly to corruption, man holds an equivocal rank between
brute and angel. He dies, he survives himself. (Haller (1794), 95–6)25
While the physical-theologian wishes to direct his gaze upwards, to the
higher beings, Kant – with Rousseau – turns his gaze below. Instead of
comparing the human being to an angel, Kant’s comparison is with an
animal for which human experience is a mere possibility. Collins formulates
this with clear reference to the physico-theological context right from the
beginning:
If one were to remove reason from the human being, then the question is:
What sort of animal would the human being then be? He certainly might
not be the last one, but his animality, since it is moderated by the human
soul, is hard to recognise; for who knows what kind of animality the Deity
mixes with reason in order to make a human being. (VA-Collins 25:14)26
25 Kant probably used Haller (1751). Kant continues to refer to such a physico-theologically construed
‘intermediate thing’ (Mittelding) between God and Man with sceptical and ironic distance in his
Doctrine of Virtue (MS 6:461 ff ). Seen in this way, it seems likely that Pope or Haller is among those
who ‘would introduce’, according to the Critique of Pure Reason, ‘that intermediate thing between
matter and thinking beings’ (KrV A222/B270). According to Warda, Kant was in possession of a
German translation of the Système de la nature by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis: Versuch von
der Bildung der Körper (1761) (Warda (1922), 29). The anonymous translator cites Haller with the
following words: ‘Ill-fated thing between Angels and Brutes / So proud of your reason, yet never do
you use it’ (my translation, p. 54: ‘Unselig Mittelding von Engeln und vom Vieh! / Du prahlst mit
der Vernunft, und du gebrauchst sie nie’).
26 See also ‘This is an important item about which many authors have already ventured to write,
among whom Rousseau is the most distinguished. What should one in fact judge about humanity?
Among the animals, and among all beings, what [kind of] a character does it have? How much
good and how much evil is in it? Does he contain a source for evil, or for good, in himself? In the
first place, the human being must be characterised as an animal. Linné says that, upon all reflection,
he finds nothing special about the human being as an animal; hence he must also put him in one
class with the ape. If one also wanted to infer the character from this, then it would be very bad, for
the apes are very malevolent and deceitful animals. Here, however, we are comparing the human
being with all animals in general, and so first of all we ask: if the human being were in a savage
state, and had no use of reason, what [sort of] animal would he in fact be there?’ (VA-Friedländer
25:675). Even in the final version of his Anthropology, Kant refers explicitly to Rousseau regarding
this question (see A 7:324).
Parow’s account from 1772–3 reads as follows:
Because man is an animal that must be disciplined, and which grows up
without discipline, he is not dissimilar to a wild animal. Rousseau made a
mistake when he thought that discipline sprang from the nature of man.
(VA-Parow 25:447; Joshua Mendelsohn’s translation)27
In other words, the human being is a creature that needs to be educated.
Nature alone (i.e. a divine creator) does not make him into what he, with
the help of education, can be and become. With this new impulse, Kant
shows not only that he is, as I have shown elsewhere (Stark 2012, 2014),
an immediate successor of the Genevan Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but rather
also that he has embarked on the long road of empirical observation of
the human being and human beings. We have before us an echo of this
readings-based empirical study, largely preserved in the student accounts
of his lectures on anthropology.
27 Similarly, ‘Man is an animal that must be disciplined’ (VA-Parow 25:425). This prefiguration, which
is not picked up in VA-Parow 25:426 (editor’s note #236) may refer to the quoted passage on p. 325.
This ‘investigation of passions’ is in fact continued, however, with the intention of effecting a
positive change – the formation of a morally founded character through education. In the following
years, this fundamental thesis is repeated with only minor variations, finally being suggested in
the Anthropology (A 7:267). See also the Handschriftlichen Nachlaß 15:533, 647, 652, 766, as well
as VA-Friedländer 25:582, 643, VA-Pillau 25:814 f, Menschenkunde 25:1146, 1170, VA-Mrongovius
25:1385, and VA-Busolt 25:1516.
cha pter 2
Self-cognition and self-assessment

Rudolf A. Makkreel
Kant lectured on anthropology from 1772 until his retirement in 1796. Now
that some of these lectures as recorded by students have become available –
first in the 1997 Academy edition, Volumes 25.1 and 25.2, and then in the
Cambridge translation edition of 2012 – it is also possible to understand
more adequately the final 1798 version that Kant allowed to be published
as his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Some of the earlier
lectures give more detailed examples to support his views about human
nature. There are many positions that Kant holds throughout, but there
are also shifts of emphasis that show a certain development in his thinking.
In some of the lecture courses on anthropology Kant seems confident
that we can intuit ourselves. In the earliest Collins lectures of 1772–3 he
espouses the view that we can intuit ourselves in a non-phenomenal way:
‘We have no intuition in the whole world except the intuition of our
self; all other things are appearances’ (VA-Collins 25:14). The Friedländer
and Pillau lectures, from the 1770s as well, also mention our ability to
intuit ourselves. But subsequently Kant goes to great lengths to stress the
difficulties of observing oneself as one is. The alternative that is proposed
is to cognise oneself in terms of what one can make of oneself in the world.
The overall aim of this chapter will be to explore Kant’s views on our
cognitive faculties to establish what, if anything, can be done to compensate
for the limits of introspective self-observation. In considering how we can
become aware of ourselves, three approaches will be examined: (1) that
of inner sense at the level of the soul animating the body, (2) that of the
interior sense at the level of our state of mind and (3) that of apperception
at the level of intellect and spirit. I will argue that the second and third
approaches to self-cognition replace self-observation with self-assessment.
To point to what is distinctive about the interior sense that is introduced
in the final Anthropology, Kant’s discussions of the cognitive faculties in
various versions of the anthropology ranging from 1772 to 1798 will be
examined.
18
Self-cognition and self-assessment 19
1. The problematic nature of inner sense

Inner sense is what one would expect to turn to in order to ascertain what
is going on in the human psyche. This is certainly the impression Kant
gives in the preamble of the extensive Friedländer Lectures of 1775–6. There
we read, ‘The world as an object of outer sense is nature, the world as an
object of inner sense is the human being’ (VA-Friedländer 25:469). In these
lectures inner sense is conceived simply as our capacity to intuit ourselves.
It is not suspected of being unreliable, but attentiveness to it is said to
be ‘wearisome and forcible, although it is necessary for re-examination; it
only must not be continuous’ (VA-Friedländer 25:492). The Mrongovius
lectures of 1784–5 do begin to cast doubt on inner sense by speaking of
its delusional sensations (see VA-Mrongovius 25:1256). This reflects Kant’s
position in the Critique of Pure Reason that inner sense is purely phenomenal
and should not be confused with apperceptive self-consciousness. This
position is more fully acknowledged in the final Anthropology, where the
‘passivity of the inner sense of sensations’ (A 7:142) is dismissed as only
being relevant to psychology, not to philosophical and anthropological
reflection.
Since outer sense gives human beings access to the world around them,
it is inner sense that empirical psychologists have turned to for access to
their subject matter. One of the problems Kant has with inner sense is that
it offers a stream of obscure rather than clear representations. Sometimes
Kant speaks of obscure (dunkle) representations as being in the shade, as
it were, so that we can only be dimly aware of them, and sometimes as
those we are not conscious of. What is given in inner sense need not,
however, be unconscious because ‘we can still be indirectly conscious of
having a representation, even if we are not directly conscious of it’ (A
7:135). There are also representations of outer sense that are obscure but
they can more readily be referred to external objects that have spatial
determinacy. The Anthropology expands on this by describing the obscure
representations in the human being as an immense field of which only a
few points are clear: ‘only a few places on the vast map of our mind are
illuminated’ (A 7:135, original emphasis). This indicates that the field of
obscure representations can be regarded as the vague horizon within which
some clear representations can be fixed. A clear representation is defined as
one that is able to distinguish one object from another and therefore must
already belong to outer sense. The representations of inner sense cannot
be made clear and determinately fixed. They constitute an indeterminate
temporal stream, or, as the final text reads, ‘inner sense sees the relations
20 Rudolf A. Makkreel
of its determinations only in time, hence in flux, where the stability of
observation necessary for experience does not occur’ (A 7:134).
Introspection as the attempt to observe this flux of inner sense is diffi-
cult because it interferes with the phenomenal play of sensations. In the
Friedländer Lectures Kant notes that self-observation is more arduous than
the observation of things in the external world and should only be done
rarely. Then referring to a human being who wants to study himself, Kant
asserts in the Menschenkunde of 1781–2 that ‘when the incentives are active,
he does not observe them . . . But if he does observe himself, then all of the
incentives are at rest and he has nothing to observe’ (VA-Menschenkunde
25:857). This language about the difficulties of self-observation is almost
identical to that of the final Anthropology (see A 7:121). In the latter, the
limits of observing others are discussed as well:
If a human being notices that someone is observing him and trying to study
him, he will either appear embarrassed (self-conscious) and cannot show
himself as he really is; or he dissembles, and does not want to be known as
he is. (A 7:121)
What is left as a more reasonable alternative to human self-observation

(Beobachtung) is a less explicit taking note (Bemerkung) of oneself. But our
ability to take note of inner sense must be kept within limits. To dwell
in any way on these obscure representations of inner sense is to subject
ourselves to an overwhelming play of sensations. This is unhealthy and
leads to hypochondria. From early on Kant indicates that one should not
attend to one’s person, as the hypochondriac does, but to one’s activities
in engaging others and the world around us (see VA-Collins 25:23). This
means, then, that empirical psychology, which studies the soul as the sphere
of inner sense, is a suspect science. By replacing empirical psychology with
his own anthropology, Kant makes it clear that we should not study the soul
by itself. He notes that the soul is sometimes regarded as the organ of inner
sense just as the ear and eyes are organs of outer sense. But to make this
comparison with other bodily organs threatens to transform psychology
into a physiological anthropology. What Kant is proposing instead is an
anthropology that correlates the soul with mind and spirit. The important
thing is to not focus on the idea of the soul as such.
2. Developing soul into mind and spirit

Rational metaphysics has posited the soul as an ideal immortal substance
that is distinct from material substance. Empirical psychology in the
eighteenth century regarded the soul as the locus of certain capacities
of the human being as a living animate being. Kant used the ‘Psychologia
empirica’ of Alexander Baumgarten’s Metaphysica as the text for his lectures
on anthropology, and the early lectures reflect this by making more refer-
ences to the soul than do the later ones. In the final published version of
the Anthropology Kant says that he will ‘abstract from the question whether
the human being has a soul or not (as a special incorporeal substance)’ (A
7:161). Accordingly, he refers to the soul only in passing as the so-called
organ of inner sense.
The early Collins notes relate the soul to mind and spirit as part of a
discussion about our capacities (Fähigkeiten) and their development into
faculties (Vermögen) and powers (Kräfte) (see VA-Collins 25:15). A capacity
need not be active, and that is what the soul turns out to be. The relevant
passage in the Collins notes is very instructive and worth quoting in full:
The capacity to be modified, or to be passive, one calls the lower power

of the soul; the capacity to act self-actively is the higher power. Insofar
as the soul is capable of impressions that the body suffers passively it is
called anima, but insofar as it is capable of self-active action, it is called
mens. Insofar as both are united and the former capacity stands under the
moderating influence of the other, it is called animus. Anima is called ‘soul’,
animus ‘mind’, mens ‘spirit’. These are not three substances but three ways
we feel ourselves living. In regard to the first way we are passive, in regard
to the other, passive but simultaneously reactive, in regard to the third way
we are entirely self-active. (VA-Collins 25:16)
There is a broad sense of soul that encompasses all three ways or levels of
being alive, but strictly speaking ‘soul’ (Seele) stands for the mere passive
capacity to be affected by sense. The intermediate level of mind (Gemüth)
is more important because it allows us to become active, even if only in
a reactive way. In co-operation with spirit (Geist), mind can also become
self-active. The traditional concept of soul is in effect reduced to the level of
mere animate life and spirit needs to be recognised as the principle of mental
life or of being self-active or spontaneous. To dwell on the contents of inner
sense provided by the soul is to be passive. The purpose of anthropology
from a pragmatic point of view is to make us active participants in the
world. We must move from the obscure field of inner sense and turn our
attention to outer sense.
Indeed, in conjunction with outer sense the flux of inner sense could
be illuminated. But Kant is not really interested in fleshing out the inde-
terminate field of inner sense into a more determinate territory of inner
experience by correlating it with outer sense as the source of outer experi-
ence. Nevertheless, he could be seen as providing the tools for this in the
Friedländer Lectures by the manner in which he distinguishes between the
objective and subjective aspects of sense: intuition (Anschauung) and sen-
sation (Empfindung) (see VA-Friedländer 25:493). The senses of intuition
are touch, sight and hearing; those of sensation are smell and taste:
The senses of intuition are objective, those of sensation are subjective. The
former present objects to us, the others consist in the way in which we are
affected by them. For example, when seeing I perceive objects, but when
smelling, I have a sensation of an impression. (VA-Friedländer 25:493)
These are all outer senses, but some of them make a direct impression on
our own state of being. On this basis it could be argued that we can have
inner experiences that need not be obscure if they can be correlated with
outer experience. Indeed, the defining feature of Wilhelm Dilthey’s effort to
replace the Kantian conception of experience (Erfahrung) with that of lived
experience (Erlebnis) is to bring the inner and the outer closer together.
Dilthey gives an example of an inner experience that is both emotional and
directed at the external world: he speaks of looking at the picture of Goethe
in his study, but calls it an inner experience because it reminds him of the
fact that it used to hang in his father’s house and that it was given to him.
This outer experience of a picture on the wall in his study becomes an inner
experience to the extent that it recalls the past and arouses emotions and
brings about a kind of self-awareness. Although Dilthey also recognises the
difficulties of introspection because any act of attentive observation tends
to interrupt the activities of the mind, he attaches much more importance
to the way consciousness can both attend to something outside it and still
take note of itself. Even when I am totally absorbed by what I see around
me, it is always still possible to become aware that I am having this lived
experience. To be sure, this is merely an implicit awareness that is reflexively
self-referential. Reflexive awareness1 is not yet the explicit and reflective self-
consciousness of the ‘I think’ that Kant assigns to the understanding.2 But
like Kant’s reflective ‘I think’, Dilthey’s reflexive awareness is in principle
‘able to accompany all my representations’ (KrV B131) without relying on
introspection.
1 ‘Reflexive awareness’ is a translation of Innewerden and denotes a pre-reflective sense of what is

possessed in consciousness. See Dilthey (1989), 247–63.
2 For further explication of reflexive awareness as a quasi-transcendental condition of experience, see
Makkreel (1992), ‘Afterword to the Second Expanded Edition’, 428–34.
Because Kant regards the soul as the organ of inner sense and looks to
the body for the organs of outer sense, he creates an inner–outer dichotomy
that is too sharp. Even the so-called objective outer sense of sight can affect
us if the impressions are too intense, as when we have been surrounded
by bright lights that induce a headache. This surely can have an effect on
our state of being, even if only temporarily. However, Kant’s pragmatic
anthropology aims to abstract as much as possible from such states and
to focus instead on how we take command of them. This is perhaps most
clear in the Anthropology Parow of 1772–3, where we read:
Insofar as the soul is thought of in combination with the body and cannot
prevent what affects the senses from being communicated to it, it is soul,
and there it is merely passive. But insofar as the soul reacts to sensible
impressions and proves itself active it is animus, and to the extent that it is
entirely independent of all sensibility and represents something it is mens.
(VA-Parow 25:247)
These Parow notes confirm Kant’s shift away from thinking of the soul in
the broad metaphysical sense in order to assign it a more narrow sense as
passively inhering in the body. This means that a physical pain affecting
the soul (Seele) in the passive sense (anima) can nevertheless be reacted to
by the mind (Gemüth) as active (animus). By adopting a state of mind,
I respond to the pain that the soul suffers in terms of an attitude. I can
dwell on the pain and feel sorry for myself or I can try to ignore the pain
as much as possible. To truly rise above the pain requires an act of spirit
(mens), which is self-active and independent of all sensibility. At this third
level, that of spirit (Geist), my attitude comes under the control of my free
will, making me capable of adopting the Stoic ideal of being in possession
of myself (Selbstbesitz). Kant concludes that ‘the soul can be swimming
entirely in pain, and yet in the spirit there can be great gladness’ (VA-Collins
25:17).
To be in possession of oneself from this Stoic standpoint is not to dwell
on the contents of inner sense or even the resulting state of mind, but to rise
to the serene level of spiritual composure. The Stoics arrived at this serenity
through their principle of apathy. I do not think, however, that Kant wants
to adopt the Stoic attitude of apathy wholesale, mainly because it is too
negative. It involves the activity of abstraction, which, although important
according to Kant, is not yet a positive attitude. He starts out by endorsing
the principle of apathy as correct, but later qualifies that endorsement.
In the published 1798 version of the Anthropology, we read initially that
‘the principle of apathy – namely that the wise man must never be in a
state of affect, not even that of compassion with the misfortune of his best
friend – is an entirely correct and sublime moral principle of the Stoic
school; for affect makes us (more or less) blind’ (A 7:253).
Kant is willing to acknowledge that an affect is a sudden feeling that
disrupts the mind’s composure and tends to stand in the way of reflection.
Affects are not reliable guides for morality, but they are not always bad. Kant
gives an illuminating contrast between the affect of anger and the passion
of hatred. Anger is a sudden natural affect and often quickly forgotten.
But when it turns into the hatred of something it becomes a destructive
passion that lasts. An affect is compared to ‘drunkenness that one sleeps
off’, whereas passion is like ‘dementia that broods over a representation
which nestles itself deeper and deeper’ (A 7:253). Affects are like temporary
aberrations that one can get over, and they can even be put to good use.
Enthusiasm is an instance of an affect that can be of value when it is allied
with reason. The feeling of sublimity is such an affect: it stimulates the
mind and can provide us an instantaneous glimpse of the noumenal. What
is dangerous is fanaticism, which is the demented passionate extension of
enthusiasm and leads to dogmatism.
Returning to the Stoic principle of apathy that discourages affects such
as compassion, we can see Kant qualify his support of its correctness
when he adds: ‘nevertheless, the wisdom of nature has planted in us the
predisposition to compassion in order to handle the reins provisionally, until
reason has achieved the necessary strength’ (A 7:253, original emphasis).
An action will not be moral unless it is based on a rational principle, but
we should not be inhibited from using feelings such as compassion and
enthusiasm to ‘produce an enlivening of the will (in spiritual or political
speeches to the people, or even in solitary speeches to oneself )’ to create
‘the preliminary resolve [Vorsatz] to do good’ (A 7:254; my translation). To
be sure, once reason causes the enthusiasm of such a resolve, it must be
attributed to the faculty of desire and no longer to affect as feeling.
Ultimately Kant classifies apathy as a ‘fortunate phlegm’ that some have
as the natural endowment of the phlegmatic temperament. This natural
temperament may make the transition to acting on principle easier, but it is
hardly a moral achievement. For, as Kant indicated in the Friedländer Lec-
tures, temperament is merely ‘the proportion of feelings and desires’ that we
inherit. ‘With temperament we do not act according to principles and dis-
positions as with character, but according to inclinations’ (VA-Friedländer
25:636). What Kant aims for in his philosophy is the transformation of a
natural temperament such as apathy into the development of character as
a second nature.
The importance of character for Kant’s moral philosophy will be dis-
cussed later, but for the moment I propose that apathy at the level of the
soul can be improved upon at the level of the mind with what Kant calls
‘equanimity’ (Gleichmüthigkeit) in the Mrongovius Lectures: ‘Equanimity
is the firmness of our mental disposition’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1320) that is
to be distinguished from the ‘indifference [Gleichgültigkeit] [which] comes
from temperament’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1319). Equanimity does not leave
us apathetic or unconcerned about what is happening to us and the world
around us, but it involves a composure that keeps us from lashing out
unthinkingly: ‘to be equanimous one needs only to consider that nothing
in our life is as important as our good conduct alone . . . The equanimous
person always has a cheerful heart and that is the pleasure that Epicu-
rus praises’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1320). Stoic apathy can be replaced with
Epicurean equanimity.
3. Appropriate ways of attending to oneself

As was indicated at the outset, anthropology from the pragmatic point
of view is not about what nature has made of a human being, but about
‘what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make
of himself ’ (A 7:119, original emphasis). This means that instead of intro-
specting, human beings should be engaged in the world and learn what
is required to become a citizen of the world. Although Kant shares the
cosmopolitanism of the Stoics and their ideals of peace and wisdom, he
differs from the Stoics in not advocating disengagement from political
life. Apathy towards others is not the answer. Anthropology must study
human beings as both engaged in the world at large and in relation to each
other up close. Pragmatic anthropology is not a theoretical discipline, but
a prudential one. As the term ‘pragmatic’ is introduced in the Friedländer
Lectures, it is said to consist ‘in the power of judgment to avail ourselves
of all skill’ (VA-Friedländer 25:469). In the final Anthropology we read that
pragmatic anthropology is not concerned with knowing the world, but with
what it means ‘to have the world’ (A 7:120, original emphasis). The former
involves understanding what is at play in the world, the latter teaches how
to be a co-player in the world (see A 7:120). The Kantian watchwords
here are co-operation (mitspielen) and participation (Teilnehmung); both
require active engagement.
It is this shift from theoretical philosophy in the academic sense (nach
dem Schulbegriff ) to practical philosophy in the worldly sense (nach dem
Weltbegriff ) that needs to be made before a concern with self-consciousness
can be approved. We already pointed out that introspection, or observing
oneself in isolation from others, is dangerous according to Kant. Any
intense focus on inner sense can lead to egoism, hypochondria, and even
madness. The alternative to observation that Kant proposes is a less intense
‘taking note of [bemerken]’ and ‘attending to [aufmerken] oneself ’, which
become necessary ‘when one is dealing with others’ (A 7:131; my transla-
tion). I propose that it is possible to make a distinction here between an
explicit self-consciousness that is theoretically suspect and an implicit self-
awareness that is practically necessary. It is this mere self-awareness that
is to be developed by means of a pragmatic anthropology, and its proper
cultivation requires tact. This becomes evident right away because he warns
that ‘in social interchange, it [attending to self] must not become visible;
for then it makes conversation either embarrassed (awkward [verlegen]) or
affected (stilted)’ (A 7:132, original emphasis; my translation). Attending
to the self must be adjusted in accordance with one’s social context and
should not have to rise to the level of attentive self-observation.
Whereas psychology is a theoretical discipline interested in describing
inner sense, pragmatic anthropology is not. Kant is not aiming at ‘a descrip-
tion of human beings, but of human nature’ (VA-Friedländer 25:471).
Explicit self-consciousness is only appropriate at the level of apperception
and as an index to human nature in general. Thus Kant’s advice not to
bother observing the involuntary representations that come to us unbidden
does not mean that we should not at times observe the cognitive activi-
ties involved in representing the world. Indeed we read that ‘to observe
the various acts of representative power in myself, when I summon them,
is indeed worth reflection; it is necessary and useful for logic and meta-
physics’ (A 7:133; italics added). I must take notice of how the cognitive
powers function and learn their scope and limits. Anthropology has rel-
evance to what was called ‘applied general logic’ in the Critique of Pure
Reason. There Kant wrote that this applied logic is ‘a representation of the
understanding and the rules of its necessary use in concreto, namely under
the contingent conditions of the subject, which can hinder or promote
this use . . . It deals with attention, its hindrance and consequences, the
cause of error’ (KrV A54/B78–79). The main use of applied general logic
is negative, by pinpointing sources of fallacious reasoning, and it is there-
fore called ‘a cathartic of the common understanding’ (KrV A53/B78). He
makes a comparison between this kind of applied logic and the doctrine of
virtue, which assesses the laws of morality relative to ‘the hindrances of the
feelings, inclinations, and passions to which human beings are more or less
subject’ (KrV A55/B79). We can thus think of pragmatic anthropology as
a theory of education that teaches us to be aware both of the weaknesses of
the cognitive faculties standing in the way of a healthy understanding and
of the hindrances that our inclinations and passions pose for moral action.
Indeed the concluding section of Friedländer is entitled ‘On Education’
(see VA-Friedländer 25:722–8).
Kant examines the cognitive, affective and volitional powers of human
beings to judge how much each of them can contribute to their develop-
ment and to what extent they should be cultivated. Obviously the higher
faculty of apperception that constitutes thinking should be cultivated more
than the lower perceptive powers of sense. The I of apperception that unites
our representations and makes cognition possible contains no content.
The function of apperceptive self-consciousness is not to introspect what is
given in inner sense, but to provide the rules of unification for experienc-
ing the world around us. Kant sums this up in the Anthropology as follows:
‘The “I” of reflection contains no manifold in itself and is always one and
the same in every judgment, because it is merely the formal element of
consciousness’ (A 7:141). This I is the transcendental unity of appercep-
tion and functions at the level of what is called spirit in the anthropology
lectures.
Even though the senses are passive and part of the lower cognitive faculty,
they are not to be despised if they are placed under the control of the I of
apperception and its spontaneity. The senses provide the material for the
formal functions of the understanding. Thus Kant provides an apology of
sensibility over against the rationalists by arguing that the senses do not
confuse or deceive. Confusions and deceptions derive from incorrect ways
of relating representations of sense. These are errors of judgment, not errors
of sense.
Nevertheless, the senses may produce misleading semblances.3 This can
be in the way either of creating an illusion or of actually deceiving us.
There are many natural optical illusions that cannot be avoided, yet they
need not deceive the understanding. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant
gives the example that ‘the sea appears higher in the middle than at the
shores’ (KrV A297/B354). Yet the understanding knows that this is not
really the case, so we learn not to be fooled by this illusion produced by
light rays. But having earlier said that the senses as such do not deceive,
Kant goes on to mention that sometimes a sensory illusion (Sinnenschein)
may be deceptive. This is initially confusing, but the example Kant gives
3 The Cambridge translation of the Anthropology renders Kant’s term Blendwerk as ‘delusion’. I will
instead follow the translation of the Critique of Pure Reason and translate it as ‘semblance’. Delusion
comes too close to deception and is not an adequate covering term to encompass illusion.
of a deception of the senses is the use of make-up. The senses can be said
to be deceived by those who apply make-up to cover facial blemishes such
as wrinkles. It is artifice that creates the semblance of smooth unblemished
skin. Kant fails to point out that the smooth facial surface that is seen is
really there, it just isn’t the natural skin we normally expect to see. The
deception is not really sensuous, for it results from faulty assumptions.
Another kind of artificial semblance is called ‘bewitchment’, which can be
caused by the passion of love. With bewitchment the imagination seems
to be a contributing factor.
Kant follows the section on sensible illusion with one on ‘moral illusion’
(A 7:151). Here he argues that a part of being a civilised human being is to
‘adopt the illusion [Schein] of affection, of respect for others, of modesty,
and of unselfishness without deceiving anyone at all’ (A 7:151). These are
artificial forms of politeness that make it easier to deal with other people.
Bowing and courtly gallantry are part of the decorum of Kant’s day that
may seem insincere to us. But Kant thinks that no one expects such sensible
signs of politeness to be sincere and that the semblance of benevolence and
respect evoked by them may eventually produce the real thing. Whereas
make-up is considered deplorable because it is used to make oneself seem
better than one is, certain forms of flattery seem to be acceptable because
they make others seem superior.
When Kant goes on to consider what our senses can teach us, he makes
it clear that sensibility also includes the power of the imagination (Ein-
bildungskraft). The senses provide intuition in the presence of objects,
the imagination without their presence. We already saw that the intu-
itive content of sense may not be directly conscious. When that content
becomes conscious it ‘is called sensation, especially when the sensation at
the same time arouses the subject’s attention to his own state’ (A 7:153,
original emphasis). We noted earlier that in the Friedländer Lectures of
1775–6, Kant distinguished between the objective senses of sight, hearing
and touch that are intuitive and the subjective senses of smell and taste that
provide us with sensory impressions. In the 1798 published lectures these
senses are distinguished less sharply, in terms of degree, namely as more
or less objective. Moreover, we find a new distinction between organic
(organ-based) and vital sensations that was introduced in the Anthropologie
Mrongovius of 1784–5 (see VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). The organic senses are
the five outer senses already referred to. The most objective sense of sight
affects the nerves of the eye as a sense organ just as the most subjective
sense of smell affects the nerves of the nose. Vital sensations and vital sense
are more difficult to define.
4. Vital sense, interior sense and self-assessment

Vital sensations are different in that they affect the whole body. In Mron-
govius we read that ‘through the vital sense the entire nervous system is
vibrated as for example with horror, which is elicited by ideas as well as
outer objects’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). The final Anthropology elaborates
as follows:
Sensations of warm and cold, even those that are aroused by the mind
(for example, by quickly rising hope or fear), belong to vital sensation. The
shudder that seizes the human being himself at the representation of the
sublime, and the horror with which nurses’ tales drive children to bed late
at night, belong to vital sensation; they penetrate the body as far as there is
life in it. (A 7:154, original emphasis; my translation)
What distinguishes vital sensations is that they can leave their mark, not
in ‘inner sense’ (innerer Sinn = sensus internus) but in what Kant calls our
‘interior sense’ (inwendiger Sinn = sensus interior) (A 7:153). Interior sense
has to do with ‘the feeling of pleasure and displeasure; that is, the receptivity
of the subject to be determined by certain representations to preserve or reject
the state of those representations’ (A 7:153, added emphasis; my translation).
What is of anthropological interest concerning vital sensations, in the case
of both the merely physiological state of being hot and the mental state
of fear, is the capacity of interior sense to assess what to do about them.
Assuming that these states are felt to be unpleasant, we want to take action
to be released from their hold on us. The interior sense is the capacity to
preserve or reject a state of mind. Whereas inner sense is receptive, the
interior sense can be said to be responsive.
We have pointed to some similarities between a bodily vital sense and a
mental interior sense. However, it should be noted that whereas the vital
sense was anticipated in Mrongovius, the interior sense was not. Kant does
not seem to have developed this late concept of the interior sense, but
its introduction sheds light on how we should attend to ourselves. When
we attend to inner sense, we think of the life of consciousness in terms
of representational contents that are obscure and readily distorted by our
imagination. But there is a pragmatic way of thinking about the life of
consciousness in terms of states of mind that reflect how we assess things.
I propose that Kant’s notion of an interior sense initiates that function
and signals the transition to the idea that self-cognition is not a project of
self-description but of self-assessment. The interior sense of §15 provides a
felt-assessment of our overall state of mind just as the vital sense is said to
register our overall bodily state in §16.
Then beginning with §17 the organic senses are assessed. Kant starts with
touch (Betastung) as providing direct external perception, which makes it
‘the most important and most reliably instructive’ sense (A 7:155). Its use
lies in immediately informing us of the shape of objects and provides
the basis for the mediate objective senses of hearing and sight as sources
of cognition. Touch is considered purely in terms of its objective spatial
import. How an object ‘feels’ (anzufühlen sei) (A 7:155) – that is, whether
its surface is smooth or rough, warm or cold, which would be of interest to
vital sense – is not considered relevant here and must be abstracted from.
Hearing contributes nothing to further determining the shape or spatial
determinacy of objects, but because the sounds we utter through language
do not directly point to objects, they are considered to be ‘the best means
of designating concepts’ (A 7:155). The use of articulated sounds in speech
allows us to reason with others about how we represent objects in order
to conceptually define their rule-bound behaviour. But when we listen to
sounds in terms of their tonal qualities, then we have music that moves
our vital sense. Music is defined as ‘a language of sheer sensations (without
any concepts)’ that allows ‘a communication of feelings at a distance to all
present within the surrounding space’ (A 7:155).
Sight is a sense of mediate sensation, as was hearing. Its importance lies
in its capacity to discern matter in motion –not just in the space of touch,
but also in time of hearing. Sight is evaluated as the noblest sense because it
has the widest spatial scope and represents objects as intuitively as possible
with the least admixture of self-feeling. In other words, sight allows us to
forget about ourselves – in terms of both the obscure contents of inner
sense and the interior state of our feelings – and be absorbed in the world
around us.
Kant does not skip over the more subjective senses of taste and smell.
Whereas the first three organ-based senses rely on mechanical influence,
these last two organ-based senses of taste and smell involve chemical influ-
ence and can strongly affect our sense of pleasure and displeasure. Smell
is the one sense that it does not pay to cultivate because ‘there are more
disgusting objects than pleasant ones’ (A 7:158). Yet we cannot dispense
with it because it can warn us of dangerous gases and fumes. Taste can
warn of spoiled food but it ‘also has the specific advantage of promoting
sociability in eating and drinking, something the sense of smell does not
do’ (A 7:159).
However, even the noblest sense of sight may affect the interior sense,
as Kant admits when he speaks of how ‘in the strongest light we see
(distinguish) nothing’ (A 7:158, original emphasis). This is a case of feeling
ourselves being frustrated by the sense of sight rather than clearly seeing the
objects before us. Thus Kant concludes, ‘given the same degree of influence
on them, the senses teach less the more strongly they feel themselves being
affected’ (A 7:158, original emphasis).
The following paragraph confirms that even the most objective organ-
based senses may affect our state of well-being, and, if they do, it is indirectly
by way of the vital sense:
The more susceptible to impressions the vital sense is (the more tender and
sensitive), the more unfortunate the human being is; on the other hand, the
more susceptible he is toward the organ-based sense (sensitive) and the more
inured to the vital sense, the more fortunate he is – I say more fortunate, not
exactly morally better – for he has the feeling of his own well-being more
under his control. (A 7:158)
Our fortune depends on not allowing the interior sense to be unduly
swayed by the vital sense as it is affected either by general conditions
like heat or by overly stimulated organs of sense. A person who does
not let the intensity of sense impressions affect his sense of well-being
is strong enough to develop a ‘delicate sensitivity’, but one who cannot
‘withstand satisfactorily the penetration of influences on the senses into
consciousness – that is, attending to them against his will’ – is condemned
to a weak or ‘tender sensitivity’ (A 7:158).
Delicate sensitivity, which is good, involves discernment about what
surrounds us by focusing on the details of what the organ-based senses
teach us about the world and being willing to face any negative effects on
our vital sense. At the level of interior sense, one could choose to abstract
from these negative effects as much as possible, not unlike the way Kant
suggested in Collins that we should move from the passive level of mere
soul to the responsive level of mind and the self-activating or spontaneous
level of spirit.4 Of course the senses can also have a pleasant enlivening
effect on our vital sense and then we naturally wish to preserve it rather
than overcome it. If the felt pleasure reaches a reflective level and puts our
cognitive faculties in a purposive harmony, then the positive assessment of
it at the level of interior sense can be affirmed at the level of judgment.
What characterises tender, as distinct from delicate, sensitivity is the
inability to abstract from the negative effects that the vital sense can have
on us. Tender souls would seek out what is pleasant and avoid what is
challenging or threatening in any way. In matters of taste they would opt
for easy beauty and stay clear of the sublime. Tender sensitivity is sensibility
in retreat. It is the reluctance to suffer the potential negative effects on the
4 ‘Mind’ (Gemüth) should be conceived as the ‘mental feeling’ of interior sense and should not be
equated with ‘intellect’ (Verstand), which functions at the level of spirit.
vital sense and the incapacity to properly respond to them through the
interior sense.
The vital sense indicates our overall state of being apart from our con-
trol whereas the interior sense as I am elaborating it here would signal
the ability to take control through self-assessment. Kant’s account of the
sublime allows us to further refine this proposed relation between the vital
sense and the interior sense. We already saw Kant associate the sublime
with how the vital sense can make our bodies shudder with terror. In the
Critique of the Power of Judgment, the sublime was shown to be either
physically terrifying or imaginatively challenging, with the possibility of
obtaining pleasurable relief through the realisation that we are more than
natural beings. As natural beings, we feel that our life is somehow threat-
ened by overpowering mountains and violent storms, but once we remind
ourselves that we are also rational beings we recognise that we possess a
more fundamental power to improve our life rather than merely to preserve
it. The sublime is an emotional state of being stirred (Rührung), namely
‘a subjective movement of the imagination, by which it does violence to
the inner sense’ (KU 5:259; italics added) and the way it temporally orders
representational contents. When we confront something overwhelming,
the ordinary way of apprehending things progressively in time must be
reversed by ‘a regression’ that comprehends things in ‘one instantaneous
moment’ (Augenblick) (KU 5:258; my translation). This instant is not part
of the linear flux of time, but constitutes a limit point of time.5 It discloses
a state of mind that is felt to be simultaneously displeasurable and plea-
surable. The violence done by the sublime to the time of inner sense and
the displeasure of the vital sense can prompt us to pause and plumb our
interior sense to find aesthetic relief. Kant did not yet use the term ‘interior
sense’ in 1790, but he already spoke of the ultimate purposiveness of the
sublime as taking stock of the ‘overall determination of the mind’ (KU
5:259; my translation) in a single intuition. Both involve self-assessment:
that of interior sense is felt and pragmatic; that of the sublime state of mind
invokes our practical vocation.
5. Character and reason

The interior sense of Part One of the Anthropology anticipates what Kant
refers to as character in Part Two. The importance of human character
is stressed in all the lectures on anthropology, but we first find a separate
5 See Makkreel (1990), 73–87 and 92–9 for a more detailed analysis of the sublime.
part devoted to it in the extensive Friedländer notes. Character represents a
principled way of life whereby persons make something of themselves. To
develop character means to acquire the resolve to act on moral principle and
‘not to fly off hither and yon’ (A 7:292) like those who subject themselves
to the obscure and involuntary contents of their inner sense. What was
referred to earlier as equanimity seems to be an important constituent of
the resolve that is needed to build moral character.
I have interpreted what the Anthropology says about the interior sense as
the capacity for felt self-assessment. The overall self-determination involved
in the sublime and in the development of moral character goes further in
that both move to the level of judgment and reason. To possess character
is to have ‘inner worth’ by living according to the maxim of reason, which
is to be consistently true to oneself.
With the aim of developing persons with a good character who exhibit
wisdom in their mode of life, the cognitive faculties need to be properly
cultivated and made productive. This means first of all that the imagination
needs to be pushed beyond its passive mode of fantasy (Phantasie). The
productive power of the imagination (Einbildungskraft) can manifest itself
in associating representations that have frequently followed each other to
produce some useful habits. But these associations are not rule-bound and
need to be tamed by ‘sensibility’s productive faculty of affinity’ (A 7:176).
Kant defines affinity as ‘the union of a manifold in virtue of its derivation
from one ground’ and advises that ‘in silent thinking as well as in the
sharing of thoughts, there must always be a theme on which the manifold is
strung’ (A 7:176; italics added). This imaginative faculty of affinity provides
‘rules of sensibility’ (A 7:177) that I will call thematic, for they fall short of
the conceptual consciousness of a rule as a rule. Only the understanding
can provide a consciousness of rules as universal. Accordingly, the imagina-
tive union of affinity produces a thematic generality that is ‘in conformity
with the understanding although not derived from it’ (A 7:177, original
emphasis).
After warning about the ways in which the imagination can play with us
and lead us astray if we do not use the power of judgment, Kant turns to
some further positive uses of the imagination in the section on ‘visualising
the past and future’ (A 7:182), by means of memory and foresight. Memory
and foresight make a voluntary use of the imagination ‘to connect in
a coherent experience what no longer exists with what does not yet exist
through what presently exists’ (A 7:182, original emphasis).
Elaborating on the nature of memory, Kant points out that the skills
of recalling things easily and of retaining them for a long time rarely exist
together. That is why methods of cultivating memorisation are important.
Kant distinguishes three such methods. The first method is mechanical and
based on frequent word-for-word repetition. The second method is called
ingenious because it associates representations that have a mere contingent
relation with each other. The first method is rejected as too cumbersome
and the second as unreliable. What is needed is a remedial third method of
judicious memorising that orders things by general themes and maps them
topically. It imagines ‘a table of the divisions of a system . . . where, if one
should forget something, one can find it again through the enumeration
of the parts that one has retained’ (A 7:184, original emphasis). Ordering
representations topically is to align the imagination with judgment. Kant
recommends a ‘judicious use of topics, that is, a framework of general
concepts, called commonplaces’ (A 7:184). Such a topical framework can
provide an orientational system in which a part that has been forgotten can
be found by locating it with reference to other thematically related parts
that have been retained.
Memory is obviously useful in contributing to self-cognition. It can
judiciously fill in what the immediate rush of the contents of inner sense
often leaves obscure and random-seeming. What foresight can disclose
about ourselves may be less clear, but it is this imaginative capacity that
interests Kant more than any other, ‘because it is the condition of all
possible practice and of the ends to which the human being relates the use
of his powers’ (A 7:185). Foresight is at least in part a function of our desires
and can thus provide insight into our character. Indeed, character is what
allows a living being’s ‘vocation to be cognized in advance’ (A 7:329).
Following up on the relation between memory and foresight, Kant turns
to our ability to use signs. The power to signify is described as using ‘the
present as the means for connecting the representation of the foreseen with
that of the past’ (A 7:191). When Kant introduced memory and foresight,
he related the past, present and future in terms of a temporal experiential
continuum. One can start from present experience to either go back to
visualise the past or go forward to visualise the future. But when discussing
the power to signify, something present is used as a sign to help us think
simultaneously about the past and the future. The something present is a
sensuous representation (Vorstellung) that is made imaginatively ‘represen-
tative’ (stellvertretend) (VA-Busolt 25:1473) of other non-present things. In
the Busolt Lectures of 1788–9 Kant distinguishes between signs that merely
accompany what is thought and signs that become representative sym-
bols for it. The importance of imaginative symbols is reinforced in the
final Anthropology, but there the language reflects §59 of the Critique of
the Power of Judgment. Now the notion of a symbol being representative
(stellvertretend) is replaced by its being presentational (darstellend). The
new wording is as follows:
Symbols are mere means used by the understanding to provide its concept
with meaning [Bedeutung] through the intuitive presentation [Darstellung]
of an object for it. But they are indirect means only, owing to an analogy with
certain intuitions to which this concept can be applied. (A 7:191, original
emphasis; my translation)
Symbols are imaginative representations that are not used to directly refer to
(deuten) particular things but to give multiple things meaning (Bedeutung)
by indirectly presenting them.
The symbolic extension of the imagination produces linguistic charac-
terisation and allows us to converse with ourselves in a thoughtful way,
instead of vainly trying through introspection to visualise ourselves percep-
tually. This is summed up nicely in §39 of the Anthropology: ‘All language is
a signification of thought and, on the other hand, the best way of signifying
thought is through language, the greatest instrument for understanding our-
selves and others’ (A 7:192; italics added). Thinking is then characterized as
both ‘speaking with oneself ’ and ‘listening to oneself inwardly’ (A 7:192).6
Just as this power to signify puts things in the past and in the future on
the same level of thought, it puts the self and others in communion. We
can learn about ourselves and our character through linguistic comparison
with others.
Character is defined by Kant ‘as a way of thinking’ (Denkungsart) (A
7:291) that involves self-prescription, namely the binding of one’s behaviour
by means of practical principles. What a person ‘has pre-scribed [vor-
geschrieben] to himself’ (A 7:292) as his character is a way of thinking that
at the same time requires linguistic characterisation to be communicable.7
The determination of character seems to require a communal context and
this will be confirmed in what follows.
We can properly determine what to make of ourselves as human beings
only by moving to the higher cognitive faculty, namely ‘understanding as
the faculty of thinking (representing something by means of concepts)’ (A
7:196). When the higher cognitive faculty is considered, not by itself, but in
relation to the cognition of objects, it consists not only of understanding,
but also of judgment and reason. Understanding in the second or narrower
6 The primacy that listening has over perceiving for understanding is one of the hallmarks of Heideg-
ger’s thought. See Heidegger (2010), 157–8.
7 For more on the relation between character and characterisation, see Makkreel (2001a), 197–9.
sense is the faculty of rules, judgment that of discerning particulars as
instances of rules, and reason that of deriving particulars from universals
and representing them as necessary according to some principle. Reason is
then explicated practically as the faculty of judging and acting according
to principles. It is this self-prescriptive sense of reason that is needed for
our moral life because we should not rely on institutional statutes and
established customs.
The practical ideal of wisdom can only be approximated, but pragmat-
ically we may move in that direction by cultivating (1) understanding to
‘think for oneself ’, (2) judgment to ‘think into the place of the other (in
communication with human beings)’ and (3) reason to ‘always think con-
sistently with oneself ’ (A 7:200). These three maxims of thinking recur
throughout Kant’s writings, but I do not recall them being discussed in the
earlier anthropology lectures. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant
explicated the second maxim as encouraging the kind of expansive mode of
thought that is necessary for forming discerning judgments of taste. But in
the final Anthropology, where the development of character as a consistent
mode of thinking is paramount, it is maturity of judgment more than dis-
cernment that is prized. The ability to use judgment to transpose oneself
into the position of others takes time. Since Kant claims that judgment
cannot be instructed but only exercised, it would seem that the point of
self-transposition is not to learn from specific others, but to anticipate a
communal way of thinking. This would conform with what Kant wrote in
the third Critique about the sensus communis, whose ultimate function is to
take ‘account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in
order as it were to hold its judgment up to human reason as a whole’ (KU
5:293). This a priori formulation shows that there is already an implicit
reference to reason in the reflection that characterises good judgment. The
final task of reason is to draw all the consequences. Pragmatically, Kant’s
three maxims of thinking are reformulated as three demands that reason
ends up making on our cognitive capacities:
(1) At the level of understanding, I should be able to think and determine
what ‘I want to assert as true’ (A 7:227n).
(2) At the level of judgment, I should be able to discern ‘what is at stake’
(worauf kommts an) (A 7:227; my translation).
(3) At the level of reason, I should be able to infer ‘what comes of it’ (A
7:227).
What one wants to assert as true ‘requires only a clear head to understand
oneself’ (A 7:227; my translation). Anthropologically, the responsibility I
have to think for myself and not let others think for me translates into the
responsibility to understand myself and my role in the world. Thus Kant
ends Book One with the claim that ‘the most important revolution from
within the human being is “his exit from his self-incurred immaturity”’ (A
7:229). Maturity requires taking charge of oneself through self-assessment.
Becoming mature requires developing good judgment, which is the
talent for deciding what is appropriate in a given case. Anthropologically,
this means the capacity to know what to do in the particular situations I
find myself in. Good judgment is the most crucial capacity we can develop
because it can focus in on the main thing that is at stake in a given life-
situation. Kant acknowledges the importance of judgment when he says
that once a lawyer has discerned what is really at stake in a legal dispute, ‘the
verdict of reason follows by itself’ (A 7:228). To the extent that judgment
is governed by the maxim of expansive thought, it should be able to justify
its own position relative to the whole cosmopolitan scheme of things.
If reason’s task is to conclude what ‘comes’ of it all after we have thought
and judged, it must appropriate those results in a principled manner and
transform the temperament we inherited into a self-consistent character.
Judging allows us to expand our mode of thinking in a communal way,
but reason must bring it back to ourselves.
Having surveyed the evolution of Kant’s anthropology lectures, we see
that it is made increasingly clear that self-cognition is not learning what
inner sense has passively assimilated but determining what reason can
actively appropriate as part of a project of self-assessment and character
formation.
cha pter 3
Kant on the phenomenology of touch and vision

Gary Hatfield
Kant’s lectures on anthropology concern the human being as active in the

world. The theoretical framework derives largely from empirical psychol-
ogy, as can be seen from the fact that the larger portion of the lectures,
entitled “Didactic,” follows empirical psychology in distinguishing and
discussing faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire. However, the purpose
of Kant’s anthropology, as developed into a pragmatic rather than a natural
or “physiological” discipline, was not to present empirical psychology per
se, but to offer some elements of empirical psychology in the service of
pragmatic ends, including living an effective life domestically and in soci-
ety. As is apparent especially from his Lectures on Anthropology, Kant added
many observations drawn from life to the framework that he adopted from
empirical psychology.1
Kant divides the cognitive faculties into lower and higher: sensibility
and understanding. Under sensibility, he addresses both the traditional five
senses and the “inner sense” by which we become aware of our mental repre-
sentations as something we experience, as well as the faculty of imagination.
Among the external senses, vision and touch especially provide objective
knowledge of the surrounding environment. Touch affords immediate
contact with external objects; hearing and vision provide only mediate
contact. And yet vision provides the most extensive cognition of external
things, reaching as it does to the stars. Vision’s accomplishments must
rely on touch, for Kant accepts that all perception of three-dimensionality
arises from touch. He holds a standard eighteenth-century theory of vision,
according to which the immediate object of sight is two-dimensional and
touch trains vision to project into the third dimension.
1 The second, shorter part of the anthropology course and lectures considered the notion of “character”
and how to form it (Stark (2003), 27–30). In the first part of the course, Kant also offered advice on
cultivating worldly skill (some examples are given below), and this advice would also contribute to
the formation of character.
38
Kant on the phenomenology of touch and vision 39
This chapter places Kant’s remarks on touch and vision into the con-
text of his pragmatic anthropology, by considering his views of the scope,
aims, and methods of that fledgling discipline. I find that Kant highlights
a method of observation drawn from everyday life, which, although some-
times drawing on the theoretical apparatus of empirical psychology, does
not deeply engage or endeavor to support that apparatus. Frequently, Kant
considers the senses in the spirit of advising his students on how to use
them and what they are good for. He supports his discussion with appeals to
observation and experience that form a kind of everyday phenomenology
of sensory experience.
All the same, he sometimes draws on theoretical knowledge of the senses
and, I argue, envisions a pragmatic function for such knowledge. In sec-
tion 1, I consider Kant’s notion of the relation between the pragmatic and
the theoretical, including his remarks that a pragmatic anthropology does
not present theoretical or “scholastic” knowledge but focuses on “worldly”
knowledge. He also distinguishes between considering human beings as
natural and as potentially improvable through instruction in pragmatic
topics. There has been uncertainty about what type of “natural” knowledge
of human beings Kant intends to contrast with the pragmatic, especially
regarding empirical psychology itself. I find not only that empirical psy-
chology is natural knowledge but, in sections 2 and 3, that such natural
knowledge is properly invoked as part of worldly (pragmatic) knowledge.
Sections 2 and 3 concern, respectively, Kant on the five senses and on
touch and vision. In relating these discussions to Kant’s views on empirical
psychology, I draw on his Lectures on Anthropology, his published Anthro-
pology, the part of his Lectures on Metaphysics on empirical psychology, and
his Critique of Pure Reason.
1. The scope, aims, and methods of Kant’s anthropology

Kant’s anthropology has a curious place in his scheme of philosophical
disciplines. It is pragmatic and yet grounded in the theoretical. It concerns
human nature, not individual human beings. Yet it is filled with examples
designed to be of interest to the individual human beings that formed the
original audience of the lectures: young men at university.2 As described in
2 In a version of the lectures first published in 1831 as edited by Johann Adam Bergk (using the
pseudonym Fr. Ch. Starke), the lectures state, “Our anthropology can be read by everyone, even
by women at the dressing-table” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:857). The Preface of Kant’s published
Anthropology describes the work as “popular” and for the “reading public” (A 7:121). At some point,
Kant was looking beyond his university audience as he gave the lectures.
40 Gary Hatfield
the oft-quoted letter to Herz of 1773, Kant regarded his anthropology as a
new “academic discipline,” an “empirical study,” that would “disclose the
sources of all the practical sciences, the science of morality, of skill, of human
intercourse, of the way to educate and govern human beings, and thus of
everything that pertains to the practical” (C 10:145–6). This description
makes it seem as if Kant intended the anthropology to include the empirical
basis of morality, and indeed that seems to have been among his initial
intentions. But, as Manfred Kuehn (2006) explains in his Introduction to
the published Anthropology, Kant changed that conception in the 1780s
and strictly separated his pragmatic anthropology from the foundations
of practical philosophy. It would at best discuss applications of moral
philosophy, not contribute to the empirical basis for it.
Already in the letter of 1773, and in the early lectures on anthropology,
Kant conceives the lectures as focusing less on morals and more on effective
action in the social sphere. He presents his anthropology as “an analysis of
the nature of skill (prudence) and even wisdom that, along with physical
geography and distinct from all other learning, can be called knowledge
of the world” (C 10:146).3 As he said frequently in the lectures themselves,
this skill was to be “worldly” and not “scholastic” (e.g. VA-Menschenkunde
25:853; VA-Mrongovius 25:1209). Methodologically, it would proceed from
experience and observation, by discussing “phenomena and their laws” by
drawing on “observations of ordinary life”; it would avoid a deep theoretical
concern with the “foundations of the possibility of human thinking in
general” (C 10:145–6).
The emphasis on worldly skill gives some sense of what Kant meant in
labeling his anthropology “pragmatic.” As his lectures developed, Kant
highlighted another aspect of the pragmatic. He constrasts the “prag-
matic” study of human beings with the study of human beings as merely
natural; that is, as manifesting natural capacities, which are studied in
empirical psychology considered as a theoretical discipline.4 In fact, this
3 Physical geography is another “pragmatic” discipline, which considers human beings as they vary in
different environmental circumstances. By contrast with pragmatic anthropology, physical geogra-
phy considers human beings from the standpoint of “nature,” including racial differences (VA-Pillau
25:733; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1195). There has been ongoing discussion of whether Kant’s anthro-
pology lectures stem from his physical geography or from empirical psychology. For an overview,
see Wilson (2006), Chapter 1. As worldly knowledge, Kant saw anthropology as complementing
physical geography. In its theoretical basis, Kant’s pragmatic anthropology draws extensively on
empirical psychology – though, as described herein, it is not “mere” empirical psychology but puts
such theoretical knowledge to pragmatic use, while also supplementing it with observations drawn
from life.
4 On the development of empirical psychology in the eighteenth century and its relation to the notion
of “anthropology” more generally, see Hatfield (1995); and Vidal (2011).
distinction frames his conception of anthropology from the very beginning.
Its interpretation, however, has proven elusive.
1.1. Pragmatic versus physiological

The Preface of the published Anthropology evokes a distinction that devel-
oped in Kant’s thinking about anthropology in the 1770s. It distinguishes
pragmatic anthropology from “physiology”:
A doctrine of knowledge of the human being, systematically formulated
(anthropology), can exist either in a physiological or in a pragmatic point of
view. – Physiological knowledge of the human being concerns the investiga-
tion of what nature makes of the human being; pragmatic, the investigation
of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make
of himself. (A 7:119, original emphasis)
This passage is followed by some remarks about the futility of seeking to
understand human memory capacities by speculating about brain traces,
given the (at that time) lack of knowledge of “cranial nerves and fibers”
(A 7:119).
By emphasizing the disparaging remarks on brain traces, this whole
passage has been read to imply that the fundamental distinction between
Kant’s pragmatic anthropology and a “physiological” anthropology is that
the former concerns human behavior in the world and the latter attempts to
know the human being in an anatomical-physiological way.5 This interpre-
tation seems to accord with the letter to Herz, in which Kant also rejected
the “eternally futile inquiries as to the manner in which bodily organs are
connected with thought” (C 10:145). The connection is correct in one way.
In the letter, Kant is remarking on Herz’s review of Platner’s Anthropologie,
a work that focused on the human being as a combination of body and
soul in interaction – although Platner was clear that he wasn’t focusing
exclusively on anatomy and physiology, any more than he was focusing
exclusively on psychology, but rather on how the interplay between mind
and body conditions human mental life (Platner (1772), xvii).
Nonetheless, this interpretation misses the primary contrast that Kant
was drawing between a “physiological” and a “pragmatic” anthropology,
which is between studying human beings as part of nature and studying
5 Many scholars simply assimilate the term “physiology” to its present-day meaning, as what I below
characterize as medical physiology, e.g. Zammito (2002), 297; Jacobs and Kain (2003a), 3, 5; Wood
(2003), 40; Sturm (2009), 265. Brandt (1999), 59–61, recognizes the broader and narrower meanings
of Physiologie and related terms, but does not notice that Kant used that term with its narrower
meaning (of medical physiology) only after about 1780.
42 Gary Hatfield
them for pragmatic ends. Human beings are studied as natural in both
medicine (including medical physiology) and empirical psychology. I
believe that Kant wished to contrast, on the one hand, medical physi-
ology and empirical psychology as branches of the doctrine of nature with,
on the other hand, pragmatic anthropology as the application of natural
knowledge to the sphere of action in the world. In this latter enterprise he
does not reject all natural knowledge, for he draws on empirical psychol-
ogy. Accordingly, he does not reject anatomical-physiological considera-
tions simply because they are natural, but because they are in such a poor
state of development that they offer no help in pragmatic anthropology. But
empirical psychology does help. Its findings are put to new, pragmatic use.6
The interpretative question turns on realizing that Kant used the term
“physiology” and its variants in two ways. First, across his entire career,
including the Critique of Pure Reason and the published Anthropology, he
used the term to mean the study of nature in general, of which physics and
empirical psychology are branches. Second, from sometime in the early
1780s he also used the term to refer more specifically to what he termed
“medical physiology” (Physiologie des Artztes – Ref 15:964; see also A 7:176,
214, 286) or the combined area of “anatomy-physiology” (SOS 12:31). The
first, broader meaning of the term is in play in distinguishing pragmatic
from physiological anthropology.
Kant clearly intended “physiology” as the study of nature to include
empirical psychology. In metaphysical lectures from the mid-1870s, Kant
discusses the various divisions of “physiology” or the “cognition of nature”
(VM-L1 28:222–3). Such a physiology is always a “cognition of the objects of
the senses,” but it may be pursued either rationally (through pure concepts)
or empirically. This physiology can also be classified by subject matter:
Since physiology is a cognition of the objects of the senses, one easily can
comprehend the classification when one notes that one has two sorts of
sense, namely an outer and an inner sense . . . The physiology of outer sense
is physics, and the physiology of inner sense is psychology. (VM-L1 28:222,
original emphasis)
There is no question here of medical physiology or of inner physiological
processes such as digestion or respiration or nerve activity. Psychology is a
part of the study of nature.7 In these lectures, Kant reflects on the status
6 Allen Wood’s “General introduction” (Wood (2013), 4–5) describes how in the Lectures on Anthro-
pology Kant drew on empirical psychology for pragmatic ends.
7 The point is made again in lectures provisionally dated to c.1790: “All science that has nature as an
object is called physiology”; both physics and psychology are “physiology” and empirical psychology is
of empirical psychology and its misplacement within metaphysics, and he
suggests that, since empirical psychology “has already become quite large,
and it will attain almost as great a magnitude as empirical physics,” the time
may have come for it to become an “academic science” (VM-L1 28:223–4;
cf. VM-Mrongovius 29:876); that is, a free-standing discipline – a status he
also envisioned for anthropology.
Lest it be thought that such usage is peculiar to Kant’s lectures on meta-
physics, in the first Critique Kant provides an even more elaborate division
of the branches of “physiology” as the study of “nature” as “the sum total
of given objects” (KrV A845/B873). The metaphysics of nature is rational
physiology and is divided into “transcendent” and “immanent”; the lat-
ter deals with nature as the sum of all objects of the senses and includes
both rational physics and rational psychology (KrV A846/B874).8 Earlier
in the work, he had characterized empirical psychology as “a species of
the physiology of inner sense” (KrV A347/B405, original emphasis). When,
in the Preface to the first edition, Kant describes Locke as approaching
metaphysics through a “certain physiology of the human understanding”
(KrV Aix, original emphasis), he clearly is not accusing him of resorting to
a (medical) physiology of cognition (which would be an erroneous descrip-
tion of Locke’s method) but is describing him as approaching cognition
naturalistically.9
In the published Anthropology, both senses of the term “physiology” are
in use. Medical physiology is invoked several times (A 7:176, 214, 286).
He also uses the sense of “physiology” as the study of nature, including
in the target passage previously quoted. In discussing “representations that
we have without being aware of them,” he uses as an example the many
obscure “sensuous intuitions and sensations” that any human being has
at any time (A 7:135). He then observes: “the field of obscure represen-
tations is the largest in the human being. – But because this field can
improperly placed in metaphysics (VM-L2 28:541), which is where it was located in the textbook for
Kant’s lectures on anthropology and his lectures on metaphysics, Alexander Baumgarten’s Metaphysica
(1757).
8 The notion of “immanent rational psychology” that Kant invokes is not the traditional transcendent
rational psychology, whose possibility has been undermined in the first Critique, but consists in such
a priori knowledge of the phenomena of inner sense as is possible through pure reason after critique.
In the Prolegomena, we learn that this includes the application of the law of cause to the phenomena
of inner sense (Prol 4:295). See Hatfield (1992), 217–19.
9 Similarly, in the Antinomies, when Kant contrasts a “physiological” investigation into the motive
causes of an action, such as occurs in “anthropology,” with considering the same actions from the
point of view of practical reason, the term “physiological” does not mean medical physiology or an
appeal to brain states, but rather an empirical investigation into behavior according to empirically
discovered rules in conformity with “the order of nature” (KrV A549–50/B577–8).
44 Gary Hatfield
only be perceived in his passive side as a play of sensations, the theory of
obscure representations belongs only to physiological anthropology, not
to pragmatic anthropology” (A 7:136). The “sensations” under discussion
are not states of sensory nerves or instances of brain activity, but they are
phenomenally characterized ideas, such as are filled in from memory and
imagination when looking at an object that is far away but still recognizable
(its parts are obscurely present). Another example is the anticipatory ideas
that arise when one hears a piece of music, ideas that allow one to detect
immediately that a discordant sound has been produced by a musician.
Because such detection takes place immediately, these obscure ideas must
be phenomenally at the ready; but they are not noticed and attended to
unless the musician makes a mistake (A 135–6).
Passages from the Lectures on Anthropology support the interpretative
point that Kant intended to distinguish his pragmatic anthropology not
merely from anatomical-physiological speculations about mind–brain rela-
tions but also from empirical psychology as a study of nature. In the earliest
surviving notes (1772–3), Kant uses the term “physiology of outer sense”
in comparing anthropology to physics, inasmuch as both are founded
upon “observation and experience” (VA-Collins 25:7). These early lectures
target the distinction between “what is natural to the human being and
what is artificial or habitual about him” as the “chief object” of Kant’s
anthropology.10 This distinction coincides with the later one between the
human being as natural and as free – for Kant soon makes clear that
what is habitual in a human being is subject to alteration, which can
arise from external circumstances (passively) or through self-activity (VA-
Collins 25:15–16). The Parow lectures from the same time begin by saying
that “[e]mpirical psychology is a species of natural doctrine” (VA-Parow
25:243). After noting that both physics and psychology rely on appearances
(and so are empirical), Kant again focuses his anthropology on distinguish-
ing “what is natural and artificial in a human being” (VA-Parow 25:244).
He also distinguishes the soul or mind under separate terms insofar as
it is passive or active (VA-Parow 25:247) and notes that human beings
have the capacity to control and modify their powers, faculties, and talents
(VA-Parow 25:437–8).
Other sets of lectures explicitly distinguish Kant’s pragmatic anthropol-
ogy not merely from anatomical-physiological speculation but also from
empirical psychology. In the lectures of 1775–6, Kant makes the usual
10 Kant also notes that he will not be speculating on the brain–mind relation (VA-Collins 25:9), but
he does not use the term “physiology” (medical physiology) in this connection.
point about the parallel between the empirical study of outer and inner
sense, he distinguishes theoretical from worldly knowledge (VA-Friedländer
25:469), and affirms that his anthropology is pragmatic rather than specu-
lative or theoretical. He describes the relation of anthropology to empirical
psychology:
anthropology is not a description of human beings, but of human nature.
Thus we consider the knowledge of human beings in regard to their nature.
Knowledge of humanity is at the same time my knowledge. Thus a natural
knowledge must lie at the basis, in accordance with which we can judge
what is basic to every human being. Then we have secure principles in terms
of which we can proceed. Hence we must study ourselves, and since we want
to apply this to others, we must thus study humanity, not, however, psy-
chologically or speculatively, but pragmatically. For all pragmatic doctrines
are doctrines of prudence, where for all our skills we also have the means to
make proper use of everything. (VA-Friedländer 25:471)
The distinction between pragmatic anthropology and theoretical or specu-
lative (empirical) psychology is clear.11 The passage also suggests (although
this is not as straightforward) that natural knowledge in the form of empir-
ical psychology forms a basis for anthropology.12 Lectures provisionally
dated to 1781–2 distinguish both “psychology and physiology” (the lat-
ter here being medical physiology), as speculative or theoretical, from
pragmatic anthropology (VA-Menschenkunde 25:855). Lectures from 1784
distinguish the “scholastic” empirical psychology of Baumgarten (whose
classifications as reflected in textual divisions are to be retained) from prag-
matic anthropology (VA-Mrongovius 25:1214). Lectures from 1788–9 dis-
tinguish pragmatic anthropology from “theoretical anthropology, which
merely poses questions and contains in itself only psychological investiga-
tions” (VA-Busolt 25:1436).
The relation between scholastic and theoretical philosophy, on the one
hand, and pragmatic anthropology, on the other, may be clarified by con-
sidering an example in which the former condition the latter but the latter
11 This complicated passage is rendered even more complex by the fact that Kant held that human
nature is given by nature but can be developed pragmatically, in the formation of “character”
(A 7:321).
12 In the same lectures, Kant earlier described pragmatic knowledge as a place “where one can make use
of all theoretical knowledge” (VA-Friedländer 25:469), which suggests that the natural knowledge at
the base of pragmatic anthropology is conditioned by theoretical knowledge and does not depend
simply on unguided pragmatic observations. And indeed he invokes “psychological” considerations
later in the lectures (e.g. VA-Friedländer 25:568). He also distinguishes the “psychologist” from the
“medical doctor” (VA-Friedländer 25:605), indicating that he does not assimilate these two areas (as
is assumed when the contrast with “pragmatic” anthropology is rendered as medical-physiological
anthropology alone).
46 Gary Hatfield
makes new applications. In lectures on metaphysics and on logic, Kant
discussed “egoism” under the meaning of solipsism: one forms the belief
that only he or she exists, that only his or her phenomena are real.13 This
discussion relates to psychological and epistemological questions about
the reliability of the senses, to cosmological questions of what exists in
the world, and to logical questions concerning the value of other people’s
opinions. In the published Anthropology, Kant discussed egoism under
what are surely three scholastic labels: logical egoism, aesthetic egoism, and
moral egoism. The discussion of logical egoism made contact with the
metaphysical (or psychological and epistemological) question of the relia-
bility of the senses. Kant excluded any metaphysical refutation of egoism
from anthropology (A 7:130). But he discussed the reliability of the senses
(which also arises in psychology and metaphysics) from a pragmatic point
of view. If uncertain of our own sensory experience (e.g. a ringing in the
ears), we may need “to ask others whether it seemed the same to them” (A
7:129). The scholastic question of the reliability of the senses in general is
put aside for the pragmatic question of what to do when, in a particular
instance, one is uncertain of one’s sensory perception. As the discussion
ensues, Kant contrasts egoism with pluralism and, in effect, endorses the
latter: “The opposite of egoism can only be pluralism, that is, the way of
thinking in which one is not concerned with oneself as the whole world,
but rather regards and conducts oneself as a mere citizen of the world” (A
7:130, original emphasis). In the anthropology lectures, Kant commends
modesty over egoism (VA-Pillau 25:735; also VA-Mrongovius 25:1215–16).
Kant’s discussion of attention and abstraction puts the framework of
empirical psychology to pragmatic use. In the published Anthropology,
Kant describes the abilities of attending and abstracting: “The endeavor
to become conscious of one’s representations is either the paying attention
to (attentio) or the turning away from an idea of which I am conscious
(abstractio)” (A 7:131, original emphasis). The definitions are straight out
of Baumgarten (1757, §625). Kant puts this distinction from Baumgarten’s
empirical psychology to pragmatic use in discussing the benefits of being
able to control one’s attention and to abstract from current perceptions:
13 From metaphysical lectures on rational psychology in the early 1790s: “Egoism maintains that it
could not be proved that there are bodies outside us” (VM-K2 28:770); see also VM-Dohna (28:680).
Kant also discussed egoism in the cosmological portion of the lectures on metaphysics, Metaphysik
Herder (1762–4): “An egoist thinks that I, who am thinking here, am the only simple being, without
connection with others” (VM-Herder 28:42); see also VM-L1 (28:206–7); VM-Mrongovius (29:928).
And he discussed it in the lectures on logic (e.g. VL-Blomberg 24:187).
Many human beings are unhappy because they cannot abstract. The suitor
could make a good marriage if only he could overlook a wart on his beloved’s
face, or a gap between her teeth. But it is an especially bad habit of our
faculty of attention to fix itself directly, even involuntarily, on what is faulty
in others . . . If the essentials are good, then it is not only fair, but also
prudent, to look away from the misfortune of others, yes, even from our
own good fortune. But this faculty of abstraction is a strength of mind that
can only be acquired by experience. (A 7:132, original emphasis; see also
VA-Friedländer 25:490; VA-Mrongovius 25:1239–41)
The notions of attention and abstraction are derived from an understanding

of what nature gives to humans (this would be a “physiological” understand-
ing in the broad sense). The advice to cultivate the power of abstraction
concerns what human beings can make of themselves through the exer-
cise of freedom in cultivating their abilities. Here we have a “physiological”
basis (in empirical psychology) for a “pragmatic” lesson (concerning human
freedom and prudence).
1.2. The method of pragmatic anthropology: experience and observation

In comparing his anthropology to empirical psychology and physics, Kant
emphasized that, as empirical disciplines, all three are based on experience
and observation. However, Kant recognized difficulties in self-observation
(introspection), observation of others, and the use of experience as sources
for anthropology and psychology. Nonetheless, he believed that these dif-
ficulties did not exclude these sources if proper care and a proper attitude
were taken.
In the lectures and published Anthropology, Kant frequently noted the
difficulties of self-observation (e.g., VA-Menschenkunde 25:857; A 7:132–
4). Introspection is difficult because the act of observing disturbs one’s
mental state. Attempts to attentively track one’s sense perceptions lead to
melancholy and perhaps insanity. All the same, it is possible to engage in
introspection. Care must be taken not to do it for too long on any given
occasion (VA-Friedländer 25:478).
More generally, self-observation can arise in several ways. First, it may
arise through experiences “without any aim” and through “attentive obser-
vations of oneself and other human beings” (VA-Busolt 25:1435). Expe-
riences “without any aim” presumably result from commerce with the
world, through which we learn things about ourselves. Kant’s remark on
the tendency of human beings to notice the misfortunes of others may well
48 Gary Hatfield
have been confirmed by his observations of himself and of others, not in a
studied way, but through the commerce of life.
More studied observations can arise when one attempts not simply to
spy on oneself (“candidly,” so to speak) but instead purposely exercises one’s
mental capacities: “To observe the various acts of representative power in
myself, when I summon them, is indeed worth reflection; it is necessary
for logic and metaphysics” (A 7:133). It also does work in anthropology, as
in Kant’s various observations on memory or imagination, faculties he can
engage at will. As he puts it, “we play with the imagination frequently and
gladly” (A 7:175).
Additionally, we may gain observations of ourselves in the course of
observing others. It is difficult to observe others, because if they notice our
doing so they may become embarrassed and change their behavior or even
dissemble (VA-Busolt 25:1437; A 7:121). Nonetheless, a skilled observer can
overcome such obstacles, while also making gains in self-observation:
It is therefore difficult to observe the mind of the human being, as soon as
his incentives are in play. However, this difficulty is diminished once one
begins to observe others, because one can be very peaceful near by, and from
time to time one can apply these observations to oneself. For since one is
already in possession of some knowledge, as a result one can also observe
oneself more correctly when the mind is active . . . The gentleman does not
want to be studied, and in order to conceal this cunning he advances with
the growth of culture, where one does not simply dissemble but also shows
the opposite of oneself. We must therefore observe human beings so that
we do not in the least give the appearance of being an observer, and we
must also dissemble. One must position oneself as though one would speak
entirely without caution and is thereby able to pay attention to everything
that others say. (VA-Menschenkunde 25:857)
Skill at observing others transfers to oneself. Skill in observing others

involves learning how to observe without seeming to do so. This is not easy:
“it is always difficult to get to know human beings while one is observing
their actions, because this demands an educated and acute observer” (VA-
Menschenkunde 25:857). But it is not impossible. It just demands skill.
Kant lists other aids for anthropology, including history, biography, and
plays and novels (VA-Menschenkunde 25:857–8; A 7:121). For our purposes,
in considering his remarks on the senses of touch and vision, the method
mainly consists in self-observation, in remembrance of experiences that
occurred “without any aim,” in attending for some brief period of time
to one’s sensory experience, in willfully engaging the senses and noticing
the outcome, and in noting some common (if mistaken) opinions about
the senses. Such observations, as applied to the pragmatic part of Kant’s
discussion of the senses, have the feel of a phenomenology of everyday
living. At the same time, Kant also introduces theoretically guided accounts
of sensory appearances into his pragmatic anthropology, presumably as a
proper part of worldly knowledge.
2. The five senses

Kant derived the framework for his discussion of the five external senses
from his lectures on metaphysics, especially those on empirical psychology.
In both empirical psychology and anthropology he categorizes the senses
into those that are comparatively objective and those that are comparatively
subjective: “The objective senses provide more cognition, and provide
occasion for reflection, but the subjective senses have more sensation than
reflection” (VA-Friedländer 25:495; see also VM-L1 28:231; VA-Mrongovius
25:1242; A 7:154). Objective senses are also described as providing intuition
(representation of objects) by comparison with sensation (often allied with
enjoyment). Sight, touch, and hearing are the objective senses. They are
informative concerning objects and provide less of a feeling of bodily
sensation in their operation. Taste and smell are the subjective senses. They
give a strong feeling of sensation in the body, often allied with pleasure or
displeasure. The division into objective and subjective is not categorical but
comparative; the objective senses include some sensation and the subjective
senses are in some ways informative, for example regarding the quality of
foodstuffs or the presence of carrion (VA-Mrongovius 28:1247; A 7:154–9;
VM-L1 28:231).
The theoretical framework of the senses also includes a discussion of the
passivity of the senses, the need for a faculty of understanding in order to
perceive objects through the senses, and the unnoticed inclusion of judg-
ments in sensory experience in the case of illusion – and, in fact, in normal
perception as well (VM-L1 28:232–5; A 7:143–50). These points about the
senses reflect standard aspects of the early modern theoretical tradition
of the senses (Hatfield (1990), Chapter 2). They are not, and Kant does
not present them as, conclusions discovered through simple observation of
everyday experiences and the use of the senses in the commerce of life.
In anthropology, Kant adds pragmatic aspects to the framework of the
senses as drawn from empirical psychology. For instance, in the discussion
of smell and taste, in addition to noting their relative subjectivity and
aspects of their operation through chemical reception of fine particles (e.g.
VA-Friedländer 25:494–5), Kant discusses their properties as experienced in
50 Gary Hatfield
society. Smell is the more social sense. A good or bad smell is imposed on all
who are nearby; hence, individuals may be concerned about how they smell.
Taste is more private. Only the person who is eating tastes that particular
food, although one may distribute the object of taste by encouraging
others to taste something (VA-Friedländer 25:496; VA-Mrongovius 25:1245–
8; A 7:157–9). In another case, he offers pragmatic advice about choosing
the colors of jacket and vest. The advice may rely on his understanding
of the theory of color, but it is phenomenological in its presentation and
particulars. Kant recommends choosing a blue jacket and a yellow vest,
which (he says) yields a pleasant aspect of an overall impression of green.14
By contrast, wearing a yellow jacket with a blue vest yields “a dirty color”
(VA-Friedländer 25:497–8). He also notes that bright colors bring out
ruddy facial complexions and make pale complexions look even paler (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1244). These feel like observations drawn from life.
3. Touch and vision

Kant’s discussion of touch and vision includes a similar mixture of a theoret-
ical framework that guides the discussion paired with phenomenological
observations concerning everyday sensory experience. Indeed, these ele-
ments are thoroughly intermixed in his discussion, although we may need
to consult some other writings of Kant to detect the theoretical framework.
In the character of phenomenological observations, Kant notes the
respective strengths of sight and touch in informing human beings about
their surroundings. Touch is the most accurate sense, because we are in
direct contact with the object. As compared with sight, touch can assure us
that a thing is really there. If we see a rose “hovering in the air” via a concave
mirror, we “can find out only through feeling whether it really is a rose”
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). In this way, touch informs us of the substantial-
ity of things. By contrast, of all the senses sight covers the largest sphere.
Through vision, we can see the stars (A 7:156; see also VA-Friedländer
25:498; VA-Mrongovius 25:1243). It is a spatial sense: “Sight presents the
shapes of things in space and divides space” (VA-Friedländer 25:494). Sight
is a “play of shape” (496). Normally, seeing doesn’t seem to offer us any
sensation at all, only objects (VA-Mrongovius 25:1243).15 These observa-
tions describe sight and touch as those senses might be used in everyday
14 Kant (VA-Mrongovius 25:1245) draws on the standard artist’s primaries of the eighteenth century:
yellow, red, and blue (Kemp (1990), Chapter 7). Yellow and blue pigments mix to make green, but
it is not clear that a blue jacket and a yellow vest yield green.
15 But, theoretically, we know that light and color are sensations (VA-Friedländer 25:496).
settings. They describe their use by an adult human being in the com-
merce of life. They are pragmatic reflections about what the senses are good
for.
Kant also introduces a more theoretically informed set of considerations
into his anthropological discussions of sight and touch. Because Kant
nowhere offers a systematic description of the theory of visual perception
as a sensory capacity (as opposed to analyzing sensibility for its contribution
to cognition in the first Critique and other works), these elements must
be detected by noting ways in which they conform to more widely held
eighteenth-century theoretical tenets that can be attributed to Kant by
implication from his scattered remarks.
It was widely held in the eighteenth century that the immediate object
of vision is a two-dimensional image, having the properties described by
linear perspective. As a matter of physical fact, such an image is cast upon
a stationary eye at any given moment. Accordingly, the fact that we seem
to see in three dimensions requires explanation. The dominant opinion
was that touch educates vision. We learn to see the third dimension by
correlating various optical “cues” with the felt locations of things.16
Adherents of this standard view also accepted a certain analysis of size
perception. In the optics of sight, an object of a constant size projects an ever
smaller image on the retina as its distance from the eye increases. The size
of the retinal image of an object in a given dimension is termed the “visual
angle” for that object. If we saw size strictly according to visual angle, then
when an object moved from five feet away to ten feet away, it would appear
half as tall. This prediction is not borne out by experience, as many theorists
noted. Accordingly, these theorists postulated that the perceived size of an
object is a product of its visual angle and its perceived distance. The most
commonly held theory was that the angle and distance are combined in
an unnoticed act of judgment.17 If the distance to the object is accurately
perceived, then its size should also be perceived accurately. Two persons
of the same height standing five and ten feet away should appear visually
to be equal in height. This would be a case of what would now be called
perfect size constancy.18
16 This position was held in variant forms by Berkeley (1709); Porterfield (1759); and Reid (1785). For
discussion of their positions, including both similarities and differences, and an elaboration of the
optical cues for size and distance, see Hatfield (1990), Chapter 2.
17 The alternative theory, held by Berkeley (1709), was that visual size (which equals visual angle)
is altered to correspond to tactual size (the size the object is felt to have) through a process of
suggestion or association that is distinguished from judgment, a distinction discussed in Hatfield
(2009), 130–6.
18 On the history of discussions and theories of size constancy, see Ross and Plug (1998).
52 Gary Hatfield
There is good evidence that Kant accepted the basic tenets of this the-
ory. A direct statement of the point that perception of the full (three-
dimensional) shapes of things depends on touch occurs in the published
Anthropology:
This sense [touch] is the only one of immediate external perception; and for
this reason it is the most reliably instructive . . . Without this sense organ we
would be unable to form any concept at all of a bodily shape, and so the two
other senses of the first class [sight and hearing] must originally be referred
to its perception in order to provide cognition of experience. (A 7:155)
“Cognition of experience” is cognition of objects, which depends on both
sensibility and understanding – this is a theoretical point about cognition
that is repeated in the Anthropology (A 7:140, 144). For present purposes,
the important point of the passage is that sight – even though it has been
designated the sense of space and shape on phenomenological grounds –
is here revealed on theoretical grounds as being dependent on touch for
instruction in perceiving bodily shape. (Hearing, Kant holds, does not
perceive shape but does perceive distance, presumably under the instruction
of touch.)
When touch educates vision, the results of this education become habit-
ual, so that we judge the three-dimensional sizes and shapes of things by
sight without knowing that we do – which is why, phenomenologically,
vision can seem to be the sense for space and shape. Kant’s subscription to
the standard theory is clear from Anthropology Lectures of 1791–2:
[Touch] is the main objective sense and only by means of it can we perceive
the shape and measure of a body. For the eyes present us objects only in a
plane, although because we have so often previously received by touch the
concept of the substance of the body, it becomes completely facile for us to
believe that, with the eyes, we see bodies also in their thickness. Experiments
undertaken with those born blind adequately prove this. They at first see,
e.g., a sphere only as a circle and could not distinguish a dog from a cat
before they had felt them.19
Kant here recounts the famous Cheselden experiments with the newly
sighted blind.20 The implication is that, through practice that co-ordinates
19 The quotation is my translation from anthropology lecture notes from winter 1791–2, as originally
edited by Arnold Kowalewski and reprinted in Kant (2000), 212.
20 The Cheselden case was well known. There is no mention of a sphere in the original write up,
just solid bodies seen in a plane. The famous Molyneux question concerned whether a newly
sighted blind person could distinguish between a sphere and cube by sight alone. In Kant’s time,
the Cheselden case was discussed together with the Molyneux question in Priestley (1776), 511–
14 (among many other places). On these topics, see Pastore (1971), which reprints the original
Cheselden reports from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
touch with vision, we learn to discern by sight objects at a distance and
with their thickness or depth, even though we start from a two-dimensional
representation. The results of learning become so habitual that we think
we see depth immediately by sight – and indeed depth does become phe-
nomenally immediate, even if it is (as we know by theory) psychologically
or judgmentally mediated. Kant makes no claim to discover phenomeno-
logically that the immediate visual representation (prior to the unnoticed
judgments) is planar. The postulation of this planar representation and
of the unnoticed judgments that yield phenomenal experience in three
dimensions are both drawn from extant visual theory.21
Kant’s discussion of the moon illusion and the illusions of the senses
in the first Critique and anthropology offer further evidence that he
accepted the standard account,22 according to which vision starts with
a two-dimensional representation and the judgments that yield the third
dimension become habitual and are mistakenly assigned to sense experi-
ence, so that their products appear phenomenally as bare sensory expe-
riences. In the introduction to the Dialectic in the first Critique, Kant
compares transcendental illusion, as something that persists even after one
knows it is an illusion, to sensory illusions. Transcendental illusion
cannot be avoided at all, just as little as we can avoid it that the sea
appears higher in the middle than at the shores, since we see the former
through higher rays of light than the latter, or even better, just as little as
the astronomer can prevent the rising moon from appearing larger to him,
even when he is not deceived by this illusion. (KrV A297/B354; see also
VA-Friedländer 25:476; A 7:146)
Such illusions were commonly assigned to a judgment of the understand-
ing, not to the senses themselves. Many theorists attributed the moon
illusion to an implicit judgment that assigns a larger distance to the hori-
zon moon than to the moon overhead. There were various accounts of why
the distance appears larger at the horizon, including because the moon is
seen through the haze of the air and so appears dimmer, which is taken as a
cue for its distance; or that the many intervening objects make something
on the horizon seem farther away than something overhead.23 However
21 Visual theory, including size and depth perception, was discussed in various loci in the eighteenth
century, including sections on optics within mathematics, medical physiology, and empirical psy-
chology textbooks; see Hatfield (1995), 209–16.
22 The passages on the moon illusion and sensory illusion are examined in Hatfield (1990), 101–7.
23 Descartes (1965), 111, ascribes the illusion to a judgment of farther distance, but does not explain the
judgment. Berkeley (1709), §§67–78, considers the explanation from intervening objects as yielding
a judgment of lines and angles, which he rejects in favor of an associative account arising from
54 Gary Hatfield
the impression of larger distance arises (and that impression need not be
noticed), then, according to the theoretical account of size perception as
combining angle and distance, the moon must be assigned a larger size if
it subtends the same angle but is perceived as being farther away.
A few pages further in the Critique, Kant endorses the theory that
unnoticed judgments underlie sensory illusions:
We draw a distinction between what is cognized immediately and what is
only inferred . . . Because we constantly need inferences and so in the end
become wholly accustomed to them, it happens at last that we no longer
even take notice of this distinction, and often, as in the so-called illusions of
sense, we take as immediate what we have only inferred. (KrV A303/B359)
When Kant states, in the published Anthropology, that the “full moon,
which he sees ascending near the horizon through hazy air, seems to be
further away, and also larger, than when it is high in the heavens” (A 7:146),
he is promulgating a specific theoretical account of the phenomenon.
Similarly, when he says that the senses do not deceive “because they do
not judge at all” (A 7:146; see also VA-Mrongovius 25:1229), he is offering
a theoretical account of how illusions arise (through unnoticed judgments
of the understanding). This teaching presumably is pragmatic because it
allows individuals to understand the basis of illusions and so not to be taken
in or to blame the wrong capacity (the senses instead of the understanding).
This sort of knowledge adds a further dimension to gaining “control”
of one’s capacities (VA-Mrongovius 25:1231; see also VA-Parow 25:437–8).
Beyond gaining control of one’s sensibility to prevent it from dominating
the understanding, one ought to understand the function of the senses
themselves.
Understanding how the senses work can correct our unguided phe-
nomenological impression of the direction of causation in vision. The
phenomenology of vision makes it seem as if, when we see things, we as it
were touch them visually; something proceeds from our eye to the thing.
This was in fact an ancient theory of vision, called an extramission theory
(Ross and Plug (2002), 26–7). Kant reported this phenomenology and the
“common” beliefs attending to it:
sight bears a similarity to feeling. One believes that the rays do not go from
the object into our eyes, but from our eyes into other objects. This happens
the moon appearing dimmer due to the atmosphere. In Kant’s time, the judgment account based
on intervening objects was discussed favorably in Priestley (1776), 504–11, who also mentioned
Berkeley’s atmospheric explanation. For a survey of recent work on the moon illusion, see Ross and
Plug (2002).
because it seems to us as though rays from our eyes fall on the object. Hence
the common man’s belief that so-called witches could cause harm through
their gaze. Hence in Spain one prays in churches that God might protect
them from the evil eye. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1243–4)
But, as Kant explains, in sight “we sense objects through light” (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1243); that is, because light affects the eyes (VA-Friedländer
25:494–6). This understanding is not achieved through unguided phe-
nomenology. Rather, it is a fruit of school learning, of theoretical knowl-
edge of how the senses work. It behooves a worldly person to acquire this
knowledge so as not to fall into the superstitions that Kant lists in the
passage.
Worldly knowledge includes some theoretical knowledge, about the basis
of sensory illusion or the basic processes of vision. Such school learning or
theoretical knowledge is a proper part of worldly knowledge.
We have seen (subsection 1.1) that, from the earliest Anthropology Lectures,
Kant made it a prime objective of pragmatic anthropology to distinguish
what was natural from what was artificial in human beings, and that he
taught that the artificial can be brought under control and improved. In
the Friedländer Lectures, he expressed this point by distinguishing human
beings under two perspectives, as “animal” and as “intelligence,” and affirm-
ing that “As intelligence, they have control over their state and over their
animality” (VA-Friedländer 25:475). Part of this control consists in know-
ing when sensory appearances are deceptive and when they are illusory
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1253–4; A 7:149–50). Deception can be discovered and
remedied (as when one is tricked by sleight of hand but then realizes it).
Illusion differs in that it persists after being recognized (the underlying
unnoticed judgments are ineradicable). A worldly individual, an “intelli-
gence,” understands such things:
according to animality one judges that everything moves around the earth
and that the earth stands still, but not according to intelligence. When the
image of the moon is larger as it rises, as animal one judges that the moon is
larger, although as intelligence one knows that the moon is continually the
same size. (VA-Friedländer 25:476)
It is worldly knowledge or pragmatic intelligence to know that the earth

moves – something that surely relies on theoretical knowledge. Similarly,
such intelligence knows that some sensory appearances are permanently
illusory. As in the case of the moon illusion or the causal direction of sight,
such knowledge comes from theoretical learning. Phenomenology alone
56 Gary Hatfield
does not decide it. The pragmatic sometimes incorporates the theoretical
(the natural, or the “physiological”).
4. Conclusion
In his discussion of touch and vision, Kant offers phenomenologically
based observations and advice that do not draw deeply on psychological
theory. But he also makes points that do rely on theory. Such intermixture
of “school learning” and theory with observations drawn from life is char-
acteristic of Kant’s writing and lectures in anthropology. His anthropology
was “pragmatic” in seeking to reveal how one might improve one’s skills
in connection with many aspects of life, from choosing the color of one’s
clothes to cultivating the ability to overlook blemishes. It included coming
to understand some basic facts of sense perception, so as to show knowledge
that goes beyond the ordinary commerce of life. Pragmatic anthropology
was to impart wisdom, and knowing how sensory illusions work, or the
direction of causation in the sense of vision, is part of that wisdom. Hence,
certain aspects of empirical psychology or indeed of cosmology (that the
earth moves) are in themselves part of “pragmatic” anthropology. In the
end, theoretical knowledge is not wholly relegated to the school or insu-
lated from worldly knowledge. In Kant’s view, a pragmatic intelligence
requires some theoretical knowledge, not merely as a framework, but as
constitutive of being worldly.
c ha pte r 4
Meat on the bones: Kant’s account of cognition

in the anthropology lectures
Tim Jankowiak and Eric Watkins
Though many crucial details of Kant’s account of cognition as it is devel-

oped in the Critique of Pure Reason continue to be a matter of vigorous
scholarly debate, widespread agreement reigns about its basic structure. No
one disputes whether Kant argues that space and time are a priori forms of
intuition through which objects are given to us, nor that the categories are
forms of (conceptual) thought through which we think about (or judge)
objects. Further, it is fundamental to Kant’s position that these intuitive
and conceptual forms are a priori because they are conditions on the pos-
sibility of experience. What’s more, both kinds of form are necessary for us
to have any substantive cognition (whether of the world or of ourselves),
since Kant’s view of cognition (as a conscious representation that relates
to an object (KrV A320/B376)) requires that every object of cognition be
both given to us in sensibility and thought by our understanding.1 Given
the way that he defines sensibility and understanding as faculties that are
distinct in kind rather than degree, and given that cognition requires the
co-operation of these distinct faculties, it is clear that the Critique of Pure
Reason commits Kant to an ambitious philosophical agenda.
Whatever interpretation of Kant’s first Critique one arrives at and how-
ever one evaluates its fundamental arguments and conclusions, there is
also substantial agreement that its explicit focus with respect to cognition
is limited. For it is expressly devoted to explaining the possibility and
limits of a priori cognition and does not contain detailed discussions of
those features that would be specific to empirical cognition. Specifically,
since one of his main concerns in the first Critique is with the objects of
traditional metaphysics, which cannot, he thinks, be given in intuition,
Both authors contributed equally to this chapter.

1 Kant employs several different notions of cognition, some broader (e.g. KrV A319–20/B376) and some
narrower (KrV B137). For the purposes of this paper, we take cognition to consist in a determinate
relation to a given object that can serve as a ground for knowledge in the sense Kant defines in the
Canon to the first Critique.
57
58 Tim Jankowiak and Eric Watkins
Kant’s primary focus is on whether pure reason’s claim to synthetic a priori
cognition of these objects is justified. To that end he investigates the a
priori conditions that are necessary for synthetic a priori cognition, but,
as a result, he does not concentrate on what further empirical conditions
might be necessary (or sufficient) for the a posteriori judgments of empir-
ical cognition. Accordingly, Kant’s primary goal in the first Critique is not
to offer a truly comprehensive account of cognition in general.2
Fortunately, by providing detailed discussions of many empirical features
of empirical cognition, the transcripts of Kant’s lectures on anthropology
help to add content to the view of cognition that emerges from the first
Critique. Since his anthropology lectures were devoted to what he calls
pragmatic anthropology, which concerns “knowledge of the human being
[Menschenkenntnis] as it is useful in society in general” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1210), it is clear that the transcripts from these lectures will contain
material that is helpful in understanding the more empirical features of
Kant’s account of cognition (even if Kant’s explicit intent in the lectures is
not to provide an account of empirical cognition as such). Thus if the first
Critique describes a bare-bones skeleton of some of the necessary conditions
of a priori cognition, the transcripts from the anthropology lectures put a
healthy amount of empirical meat on the bones of his a priori account.
In this chapter, we begin, in section 1, by briefly describing Kant’s con-
ception of anthropology and the most basic distinctions he draws when
invoking faculties throughout the anthropology transcripts. We then use
Kant’s own division of our cognitive faculties into the senses, the imagina-
tion, and the understanding as a principle of organization for the remaining
sections of the paper. In section 2, we explain Kant’s account of the “objec-
tive senses” (hearing, sight, and touch), and show that the sensory material
provided by these senses are empirical conditions of experience that sup-
plement the a priori conditions articulated in the Critique. In section 3, we
describe some of the central details of Kant’s account of the imagination,
focusing on his distinction between wit and the power of judgment and on
the law of association he endorses. In section 4, we describe Kant’s account
of both the deficiencies of the mind and the perfection of cognition (with
respect to its object, its subject, and its relations to other cognitions).3 We
think that the account discussed below is interesting in its own right, but
2 For discussion of Kant’s views of cognition in general, see Eric Watkins and Marcus Willaschek
(forthcoming).
3 Though important changes take place between the first transcripts of Kant’s anthropology lectures
and the last ones, we refrain from making any developmental hypotheses, interesting though that
may be.
Meat on the bones: Kant’s account of cognition 59
we also hope that it can shed some light on Kant’s theory of cognition as
found in the first Critique. By showing how the transcendental faculties
are manifested at the level of actual, concrete experience, the anthropology
transcripts can help to illuminate Kant’s understanding of the operations
and functions of the human mind.4
1. The subject matter and cognitive architecture of the

anthropology transcripts
For current purposes, Kant’s treatment of anthropology in the transcripts
is distinctive along two dimensions: (1) he is interested in what he calls
“pragmatic” anthropology and (2) the explanations he provides through-
out appeal to faculties that are defined in specific ways. To introduce what
he means by pragmatic anthropology, Kant begins many of his anthro-
pology lectures by introducing the idea of “knowledge of the world,” or
perhaps “worldly knowledge” (WeltKenntnis),5 which is often contrasted
with scholastic knowledge, or knowledge of the schools (VA-Mrongovius
25:1209). The contrast between the two is that the latter is interested in the-
oretical cognition and is intended for scholars, whereas the former involves
the application of theoretical cognition and is designed for society at large.
Kant divides knowledge of the world into geography and anthropology
on the basis of a distinction between inner and outer sense. Geography
concerns objects of outer sense, which, taken together, constitute nature,
whereas anthropology considers objects of inner sense, or human beings.6
Kant then contrasts scholastic and pragmatic anthropology, noting that
the former searches for the causes of human nature in general, while the
latter looks at the human constitution and attempts to apply it to situations
that arise in society, where it is supposed to serve “prudence rather than
erudition” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1211). In the various distinctions, descrip-
tions, and explanations Kant provides throughout the anthropology lecture
4 Although we address, at the level of details, the relation between specific transcendental faculties of
cognition and their specific empirical counterparts, we have avoided making any hypotheses about
the general relationship between the transcendental and empirical operations of the mind. On this
issue, see Schmidt (2008). Schmidt argues that the transcendental operations of the mind “configure”
the empirical operations.
5 It is not entirely obvious how to translate (or understand) the term WeltKenntnis. Kant frequently
uses the term Erkenntnis, which is often (though not always) translated as “cognition” (and, as seen
above, has broader and narrower meanings, depending on context), and he also uses the term Wissen,
which is typically translated as “knowledge” and is a cognate of Wissenschaft (science). It is not clear
whether Kant would be willing to identify WeltKenntnis with Wissen or Erkenntnis, or to view it
as a species of either one. It is clear that the standard meaning of the term Kenntnis, indicating
acquaintance or familiarity, would be misleading in this context.
6 See also Kant’s explanation of the distinction in the Physical Geography (at, e.g., PG 9:156–7).
transcripts, they seem to serve the students as a kind of clear, analytical
framework for assessing the different kinds of situation they are likely to
encounter in the world and are thus pragmatic in a very broad sense.
The content of the transcripts of Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology, like
that of the published Anthropology, is divided into sections according to the
three faculties that he attributes to human beings: the cognitive faculty, the
faculty of pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. His discussion
of the cognitive faculty is itself divided further into sections that discuss
the faculties of sensibility, imagination, and the understanding. He then
distinguishes the understanding further into understanding in the narrow
sense (the faculty of concepts or rules), the power of judgment (the faculty
of applying rules), and reason (the faculty of the application of rules a priori
that it legislates according to its own principles) (VA-Friedländer 25:537;
VA-Mrongovius 25:1296). All of these distinctions are drawn in roughly the
same way in the three Critiques such that it is clear that Kant is attempting
to give an account of our (cognitive) faculties that is continuous with his
own mature, official account, at the same time that he attempts to expand
on it and provide some welcome empirical content.
2. The objective senses and the objects of sense

In the Critique, sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) is typically defined in terms of
receptivity, or passivity, and the givenness of objects. Sensibility passively
receives impressions (the sensory matter which will be formed into higher
and more complex representations), and its representations (intuitions)
refer immediately to the objects that are given by means of those impres-
sions (cf. KrV A19/B33). We find a similar characterization of the fac-
ulty of sense (Sinn) in the anthropology transcripts. In the Anthropologie
Friedländer, Kant claims that “the senses are that through which we directly
represent things for ourselves” (VA-Friedländer 25:492), and later he claims
that “the senses are the receptivity of impressions” (VA-Friedländer 25:560).
In the Anthropologie Mrongovius, he says that “[s]ense is that through which
we represent an object as present,” and he analyzes the representations of
sense into “the matter, [i.e.] the impressions that the objects make on us,
[and] the form, [i.e.] the combination of the impressions” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1241). Thus the anthropological characterization of sensibility paral-
lels the official doctrine of the Critique in these fundamental respects.7
However, where Kant’s emphasis in the Critique is on the faculty of
7 Kant does not always seem to adhere to the distinction he draws in the first Critique between
sensation and intuition.
sensibility in general (focusing on space and time), in the anthropolog-
ical discussions his emphasis is on the nature and different functions of the
individual sensory modalities. We turn now to a discussion of these.
2.1. Objective versus subjective senses

Kant’s most basic characterization of the five (or six8 ) sensory modali-
ties separates them into the “objective” senses and the “subjective” senses
(VA-Friedländer 25:493).9 The objective senses are those which “affect [the
body] externally” and are the “senses of intuition” (ibid.). The subjec-
tive senses, by contrast, “affect [the body] internally” and are the senses of
“sensation” (ibid.). Where the objective senses yield a perception of objects,
the subjective senses provide merely “a sensation of an impression” (ibid.).
The representational contents of the objective and subjective senses differ
accordingly: “Objective senses . . . represent to us the objects more than the
way in which we are affected by them, and Subjective [senses] . . . represent
to us more the way in which the objects affect us than the objects them-
selves” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). Kant consistently classifies touch, hearing,
and sight as objective, and taste and smell as subjective.10
Kant is not claiming here that the objective senses yield only perceptions
of objects, nor that the subjective senses yield only sensations of the current
state of the subject. Rather, the senses are more or less objective or subjective,
and Kant’s characterization of each sense as objective or subjective should be
understood as a comparative characterization; the objectivity or subjectivity
of any sensory modality is a matter of degree. For instance, although the
sensations associated with taste typically indicate merely the way I am
affected by the food dissolved in my saliva, a sour taste will usually also
be a reliable indicator that the food is acidic, which is a fact about the
object itself, not merely its effect on me.11 Likewise, although hearing will
typically alert me to the existence of the object producing a sound I hear,
beautiful music will direct my attention away from the cause of the sound
and to my own enjoyment of it. Hence the primary (but not exclusive)
function of the objective senses is to enable cognition of the objects of
8 In the Anthropologie Friedländer, Kant contrasts “the feeling of touch” (tactus) with “feeling in
general” (sensus) and says that the latter is a kind of sixth sense (VA-Friedländer 25:493). In the
Anthropologie Mrongovius, Kant distinguishes two kinds of feeling (Gefühl): “the feeling of pleasure
and displeasure” and “the sensation of an object through touch” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). This
sixth sense is also sometimes referred to as the “vital sense” (see VA-Mrongovius 25:1242; and A
7:154).
9 Cf. VA-Mrongovius 25:1245. This distinction remains in Kant’s curriculum through the publication
of the official Anthropology (cf. A 7:154).
10 See VA-Friedländer 25:493; VA-Mrongovius 25:1242; and A 7:154.
11 This is our example, not Kant’s.
outer sense, and the primary (but not exclusive) function of the subjective
senses is to represent the way outer objects affect me.
Now as the student of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is well aware,
one of Kant’s primary concerns is to explain the conditions on the possibil-
ity of experience, which is a kind of cognition. Thus one would naturally be
curious to know how Kant’s anthropological (and empirical–psychological)
account of how the various objective senses enable cognition of objects
augments his transcendental account of the a priori conditions on the pos-
sibility of such perception. The account presented in the Critique is merely
formal: Kant there explains the forms of cognition (sensibility and under-
standing) and the forms that the objects of cognition must take as a result.
Although he also discusses, at least in the abstract, the need for a sensory
matter to fill out these forms to produce actual empirical cognition (as
opposed to simply the bare possibility thereof ), spelling out the details of
what kind of sensory matter is required lies outside the scope of the Critique.
Fortunately, the discussions of the individual objective senses from the
anthropology transcripts – hearing, sight, and touch – flesh out this impor-
tant part of the story. Specifically, corresponding to the pure forms of
intuition (space and time) are sight and hearing, which allow for the repre-
sentation of actual determinate spaces and times (respectively). And corre-
sponding to the conditions on the possibility of cognizing spatiotemporal
appearances as substantial (as articulated in the Critique’s First Analogy
of Experience) is the sense of touch, which allows for the representation
of an object’s solidity and impenetrability, and hence its substantiality. As
Kant remarks in a particularly revealing passage from the Friedländer tran-
script, “by feeling we cognize substances, by hearing we divide time, and
by sight we divide space. Substances, space and time, however, are the three
elements of outer objects” (VA-Friedländer 25:494).
We will now describe the contributions to empirical cognition made by
each of the objective senses. We argue that the anthropological accounts of
the various sensory modalities articulate empirical conditions on experience
that supplement the transcendental conditions of the Critique. Where the
Critique explains the a priori conditions that make experience possible,
the anthropology transcripts explain various empirical conditions that
make experience actual.
2.2. Sight and hearing

Kant classifies both sight (Gesicht) and hearing (Hören) as senses that
allow for perception “at a distance” (VA-Friedländer 25:493). The two are
therefore said to be “mediate” senses because they do not involve the
immediate presence (i.e. direct contact) of the object against the sense
organ, and they require a medium for perception to occur.12 For instance,
“[w]ith hearing the object does not have an effect on me immediately,
but only through the air, and I do not have an effect on it at all” (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1242). The medium of vision, by contrast, is light (VA-
Friedländer 25:594–5). With both hearing and sight, the object of perception
has an (indirect) effect on me, but I do not have any reciprocal effect on it.
Sight and hearing are also both described as “noble” because these senses
“make objects mutual for us” (VA-Friedländer 25:495). In other words,
it is through sight and hearing that the objects of sense become public,
and hence intersubjectively available. Nobility, like objectivity, comes in
degrees and Kant ranks the senses in terms of the degree to which they make
objects mutual. Sight, for instance, is nobler than hearing (VA-Friedländer
25:496). In the first Critique, “objective” is often treated as synonymous
with “intersubjective,” and this might lead one to assume that objectivity
and nobility amount to the same thing in the anthropology transcripts.
However, this is not how Kant uses these concepts in the lectures, and
the classification of the senses in terms of nobility is orthogonal to the
objective/subjective classification. Smell, despite being one of the subjective
senses, has a degree of nobility because “everyone will be concerned that an
object might smell good to others as well” (VA-Friedländer 25:496). And
touch, despite being one of the objective senses, “does not participate [in
nobility] at all” (VA-Friedländer 25:496). Thus objectivity (at least as used in
the anthropology lectures) is mere object-directedness, while the additional
concept of nobility is required to capture the degree of intersubjectivity of
sensory representations.
The objectivity and nobility of hearing and sight mark an important
contribution to cognition. Because they direct the perceiver to the publicly
available (“mutual”) features of objects, they make it possible to represent
objects in terms of their subject-independent properties. Thus if humans
lacked vision and hearing (and possessed no other “noble” senses), then
objectively valid judgments about external objects would be impossible
for them. In the language of the Prolegomena, we would not be able to
establish a meaningful distinction between subjectively valid “judgments
of perception” and objectively valid “judgments of experience” (cf. Prol
4:298). Without any representation of the public aspects of objects, we
12 The only immediate sense is touch. The subjective senses – taste and smell – operate through
chemical interaction (instead of the mechanical interaction of the objective senses) and they are
communicated “mediately by means of salts” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1245).
could form no (empirical) concept of what things are like on their own
and independent of how I am affected by them.13 If this analysis is cor-
rect, then the conditions on the possibility of cognition articulated and
defended in the Critique turn out to be necessary but not sufficient, since
the existence of at least one objective and noble sense providing sensations
of the public features of objects is an additional necessary condition. Thus
while the first Critique articulates the a priori and formal conditions on the
possibility of experience, the anthropology transcripts reveal that Kant was
also cognizant of empirical and material conditions of experience. Further
empirical conditions from the anthropology transcripts will be enumerated
below.
While sight and hearing have their “objectivity,” “nobility,” and “medi-
acy” in common, the representational contents through which they present
objects differ. Although hearing is considered an objective sense because it
enables the perception of objects, its primary function is the communica-
tion of thought through spoken language. Hearing does not allow for the
precise determination of the location of an object in space. In general, I
can at best recognize that a sound came from “over there.” Thus, “hearing
does not present objects in [terms of] their shape” and so through hear-
ing “we have no representation and concept of objects other than that an
object is merely there [da sei]” (VA-Friedländer 25:493; cf. VA-Mrongovius
25:1242). Furthermore, since objects are (relatively) permanent and stable
and “sound is temporary,” sound “does not reveal any objects [and] hence
it can at best be taken as an arbitrary sign of objects” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1243). Thus hearing does not in general allow the perceiver to determine
with much specificity the exact physical or spatial structure of an object,
though it does reveal the existence of the object producing the sound. For
this reason, hearing should be considered the least objective of the objective
senses.
Nevertheless, since sound spans a stretch of time, audible sensations
fill time. Kant took this to be significant. He remarks more than once
that hearing is important insofar as it allows for the division of time
13 Kant’s point here bears some similarity to P. F. Strawson’s project in his influential book Individuals:
An Essay in Descriptive Metaphyiscs. Strawson sought to investigate the conditions on the possibility
of “non-solipsistic consciousness” or the ability to distinguish between “states or conditions which
are experiences or states of consciousness of one’s own, and those particulars which are not experi-
ences or states of consciousness of one’s own” (Strawson (1959), 61). If our analysis of Kant’s account
of nobility and objectivity is correct, then Kant has anticipated Strawson’s investigation by offering
his own answer to the question of what is necessary for non-solipsistic consciousness. Without
objective, noble senses that allow for the representation of the public features of objects, we would
not be able to make a meaningful distinction between things that are a part of one’s own mind and
things that are distinct from it.
(VA-Friedländer 25:493–4), which he identifies with one of the “elements
of outer objects” (VA-Friedländer 25:494). The suggestion here is that the
representational contents of sensations that persist across a duration of
time (such as those given in audition) are required for the representation
of determinate temporal intervals. With only the pure intuition of time
(which would be empty), we could represent the possibility of determinate
temporal intervals, but not actual determinate temporal intervals. Thus
hearing performs the important function of marking out actual determinate
times.14
In contrast with hearing, which “provides neither the shape nor concept
of the object . . . sight provides no sensation, but it provides the shape”
(VA-Friedländer 25:496). Sight “provides no sensation” in the sense that
visual representations draw the observer’s attention almost exclusively to
the shape of the object, and the fact that one is being chromatically affected
(as it were) is rarely brought to the attention of the observer. This point is
elaborated in the Mrongovius transcripts: “When seeing, one does not have
a sensation of his own condition at all” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1243). Since the
working definition of “sensation” (Empfindung) in the transcripts treats it
as a representation of the subject’s own sensory state,15 in saying that sight is
free of sensation, Kant is emphasizing that representations of sight present
just the object itself, without any distorting admixture of representations
of the subject.16 In other words, sight is typically completely objective in
the sense defined in subsection 2.1 above. Sight’s objectivity lies precisely
in this lack of sensation in the representations of sight.
It is worth emphasizing that the “objectivity” under consideration here
has to do only with the representational (or “intentional”) content of the
representations produced by vision (and the other objective senses). That
is, the representations of these senses are about the object rather than the
14 Kant privileges sensations of hearing for this function, but presumably any sensory modality whose
sensations last for longer than an instant (don’t they all?) would suffice. Kant indicates in the
Critique that all sensations fill time (cf. KrV A143/B183).
15 This usage of Empfindung should be contrasted with its usage in the Critique. There, sensations are
most frequently described as the “matter” (Materie) of intuition, of perception, of appearance, or of
experience generally (see for instance KrV A20/B34; KrV A42/B59; KrV B207; KrV A374). In this
sense of Empfindung, sensations are a necessary component of any empirical representation, objective
or subjective. Elsewhere in the Critique, however, sensations are described as representations of the
subject’s own sensory states (see KrV B207; and KrV A320/B376). In the anthropology lectures,
Kant uses “sensation” only in this second sense. (See also note 7 above.)
16 See also the published Anthropology: “[Sight’s] organ feels least affected (because otherwise it would
not be merely sight). Thus sight comes nearer to being a pure intuition (the immediate representation
of the given object, without admixture of noticeable sensation)” (A 7:156, original emphasis). By
“pure intuition” Kant means that the representation is free of noticeable sensation, not that it is
“pure” (i.e. non-empirical) in the sense of the Critique.
subject. This does not mean that these representations are also “objective”
in the sense of accurately depicting the qualities of the objects themselves.
For instance, the color of a rose, as Kant emphasizes in the Critique, is
not a property of the rose as it is in itself,17 because the color “can appear
different to every eye” (KrV A29/B45). Hence even though we typically
represent colors as features of objects, in fact they are only modifications
of our own sensibility. Thus we can make a distinction between (1) a
representational content being about the properties of an object (as opposed
to being about the way the subject is affected by those properties), and (2) a
representational content accurately depicting the properties of an object (as
opposed to merely being the result of the subject’s relation to the object).
In general, representations of primary qualities (e.g. size and shape) will
be objective in both senses, but representations of secondary qualities (e.g.
color) will be objective only in the first sense.18
Even if the colors presented in visual representations are not objective in
the second sense, the shapes presented in these representations surely are.
As Kant remarks in the Friedländer transcripts, “shape is only the form, but
color is a play of sensation” (VA-Friedländer 25:496). The representation
of shape, or, as he describes it, “variousness in accordance with space”
(ibid.), is the most important function of sight. Just as hearing allows
for the representation of determinate, actual times, sight allows for the
representation of determinate, actual spaces. Space and time, as we learn
in the Critique, are the two forms of all external objects. Although other
sensory modalities might be up to the task of marking out determinate
spatial and temporal regions – for instance, Kant suggests that touch also
represents shape – hearing and sight are the primary means by which
we cognize determinate spaces and times.19 In general, we conclude that
empirical cognition of spatiotemporal objects could not arise without some
sensory modality that allows for the determination of actual times and
some sensory modality that allows for the determination of actual sizes and
shapes. Thus these sensory modalities are another empirical condition on
experience.
17 The reference to the features of empirical objects “in themselves” should be taken in the empirical
sense (as opposed to the transcendental, noumenal sense) of things in themselves (cf. KrV A29/B45).
18 On the primary/secondary quality distinction in the first Critique, see KrV A29/B44f. There Kant
suggests that the representation of the spatial features of an object should be taken “in an empirical
sense as a thing in itself,” while the colors of a thing do not because they “can appear different to
every eye in regard to color.” Kant also appeals to the primary/secondary quality distinction in a
different sense in the Prolegomena (Prol 4:289). Regarding this latter passage, see Allais (2007).
19 For discussion of Kant’s account of how blind people come to represent spatiality, see Schmidt
(2008), 467.
2.3. Touch
Kant often refers to this sensory modality as “feeling” (Gefühl), but he
makes a point to contrast “the feeling of pleasure or displeasure” from
“the sensation of an object through touch [Berührung]” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1242).20 In the Mrongovius transcripts he remarks that it “is the crudest
[gröbste] sense and is closest to [being] objective. It is also the most accurate
sense” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). Touch is “closest to objective” because in
touching an object one represents the object itself, rather than its impression
on the senses (i.e. it is objective in the sense defined in subsection 2.1
above). Presumably, touch is “crudest” because it is not capable of the
fine-grained degree of property discrimination that sight and hearing are.21
Nevertheless, it is “the most accurate sense.” Kant must mean that, despite
its crudity, touch is the least prone to error. I am much less likely to
misjudge whether an object is present when I access it through touch than
when I access it through sight or hearing because the latter are more prone
to misrepresentation and illusion.
In addition to its honor as “most objective,” touch makes an essential
contribution to the empirical cognition of objects: touch is necessary for
the representation of empirical objects as substances.22 In the Anthropologie
Friedländer, Kant says, “[t]hrough touch we have cognition of substances;
without this sense we would not cognize them, instead we would per-
ceive only appearances” (VA-Friedländer 25:494). And in the Anthropolo-
gie Mrongovius, he says that touch “is the surest and the best means to
acquaint oneself with the object. For without feeling and through sight
alone we would not take objects to be substances, but rather made-up
figures [gemachte Figuren]” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). We saw above that
sight is necessary for the representation of determinate regions of space.
However, it is not sufficient on its own to do more than mark out those
regions of space as filled with sensory matter. Hence sight on its own can
present an image of an object, but it cannot differentiate mere phantasms
20 In the Anthropologie Friedländer, he contrasts Gefühl with tactus, saying that the former is “a general
sense” and is to be identified only with sensus (VA-Friedländer 25:494). Despite the terminological
inconsistency, the distinction in the two transcripts amounts to the same thing.
21 In the Anthropologie Friedländer, he elaborates this point, saying that “feeling is the crudest sense,
since we feel physical things only to the extent that they are impenetrable” (VA-Friedländer 25:495).
This seems to be an inaccurate representation of the sense of touch. We encounter more than the
impenetrability of an object through touch. We also perceive its temperature, its texture, and its
shape.
22 Touch should be taken to be necessary only for the representation of empirical (i.e. phenomenal)
substances. I will never be able to touch God, but presumably I can still represent God as an ens
realissimum, and thus as a substance.
and apparitions from real, persistent substances. In order for the visible
sensory matter to be represented as substantial, it must be touched, or
at the very least represented as tangible. Kant’s illustration here is useful:
“If I notice an inverted rose in a concave mirror, I see one hovering in
the air. I can find out only through feeling whether it really is a rose”
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1242). The information given in visual perception is
sufficient to mark out the region that a material substance could occupy,
and perhaps in normal circumstances we make an immediate inference to
a material substance in fact being there, but, strictly speaking, visual rep-
resentations not supplemented by tactile representations are not sufficient
to represent visible shapes and colors as shapes and colors of something
substantial.23
Interestingly, this aspect of Kant’s anthropological account of touch
intersects with part of his account of material substance in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science. In a remark from the chapter on dynamics,
when arguing for the necessity of an attractive force in addition to the
repulsive force (which is manifested as impenetrability or solidity), Kant
maintains that only the repulsive force can be sensed directly, and this
only by the sense of touch. “The sense of feeling [Gefühls],” he writes,
“provides us with the quantity and figure of something extended, and
thus with the determinate concept of an object in space, which forms
the basis of everything else one can say about this thing” (MAN 4:510).
Although touch shares with sight the ability to distinguish “the quantity and
figure of something,” touch holds a monopoly on the representation of the
substantiality of a thing: “This substance discloses its existence to us in no
other way than through that sense whereby we perceive its impenetrability,
namely, feeling, and thus only in relation to contact” (MAN 4:510).
2.4. A priori versus empirical conditions of experience

Kant’s account of the objective senses allows us to supplement the account
of the conditions on the possibility of experience provided by the first
Critique. If we distinguish between a priori and formal conditions of
experience, on the one hand, and empirical and material conditions, on the
other hand, then it is clear that the spatial and temporal forms of intuition
23 One consequence of this analysis is that the objectivity of a representation (i.e. its object-directedness)
does not entail that substantiality is part of its representational content. Something can be represented
as an object without being represented as a substance. An example of this would be a rainbow.
When I perceive a rainbow, I take there be a phenomenon existing at a certain location in the sky,
but I do not thereby also represent it as materially substantial.
and the pure concepts of the understanding that describe an object in
general are a priori, formal conditions of experience. What Kant is adding
in the anthropology transcripts are empirical conditions of experience.
These include the existence of the objective and noble senses revealing the
public features of objects, the existence of senses (hearing and sight) that
can mark off divisions in space and time, and the existence of an immediate
sense (touch) through which the substantiality of objects can be perceived.
In short, where the conditions articulated in the Critique pertain to what is
necessary for experience to be possible, the anthropology transcripts explain
what is necessary for these possibilities to be actualized.24
3. Imagination
Just as he does in the first Critique (KrV B151), in the anthropology tran-
scripts Kant defines the imagination (Einbildungskraft) as the power of
representing without the presence of the object in intuition and thinks
of it as a faculty that mediates between the senses and the understanding
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1257). Kant’s focus in the first Critique is primarily on
how the figurative synthesis of the imagination is necessary for the argu-
ment of the Transcendental Deduction and on how the schemata can solve
the heterogeneity problem that arises for the categories and our sensible
intuition, both of which are specific to Kant’s interest in a priori cog-
nition. In the anthropology transcripts, by contrast, he makes a number
of specific claims that add empirical content to his theory of the imag-
ination. For example, Kant explores the various degrees and qualities of
the imagination, which explain its intensity and weakness in particular
circumstances (VA-Friedländer 25:514), and he notes that the imagination
cannot create impressions it has not had before, though it can create “new
forms” for them. Thus a person blind from birth cannot represent light
or darkness (VA-Mrongovius 25:1257), while a sighted person can combine
images in various ways. Further, Kant distinguishes between productive
and reproductive imagination, depending on whether one has perceived
the imagined object before, and claims that the reproductive kind is invol-
untary and called fantasy (Phantasie), while the productive kind, called
imagination (Imagination), is voluntary and especially prominent among
artists. He makes a variety of observations, or rather claims, about different
features of the imagination. For example, the imagination is stronger in
24 We do not claim that these two lists of necessary conditions are jointly sufficient. Other empirical
conditions of experience might be required, including, for instance, the associative powers of the
imagination that allow for the representation of causal relations (discussed below).
the evening than in the morning, and it can be used to help one give up
coffee, for if one eats rhubarb while drinking coffee, the imagination will
then call rhubarb to mind whenever one drinks coffee in the future (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1260). On the basis of the remarks he makes about the imagi-
nation, Kant then distinguishes fantasts, dreamers, enthusiasts, and vision-
aries as different kinds of people whose imagination has departed from
normalcy.
Kant also develops a specific account of reproductive image formation
according to the law of association of representations (VA-Friedländer
25:512). Association is based, he claims, on three elements: accompaniment,
contiguity, and relation. Accompaniment concerns the temporal relation
of simultaneity and succession. If we see smoke, we think of fire since it
occurs at the same time. Accompaniment, which makes causal reasoning
possible, “is the first and greatest degree of association” (VA-Friedländer
25:513). Contiguity is similar to accompaniment, except that it concerns
space rather than time; unity of time (accompaniment) and unity of space
(contiguity) are thus parallel principles of association. Kant is much less
clear about what exactly constitutes relation, but he mentions “similarity”
and “derivation” as instances of it. He also notes that the first two elements
pertain to the association of sensibility, whereas relation pertains to that
of the understanding. As a result, insofar as Kant views derivation as
involving the understanding and causation (VA-Friedländer 25:513), his
departure from Hume is in evidence, since for Hume our representation
of causation is based exclusively on the senses and imagination and not
on the understanding. Though Kant refers, in the first Critique, to the
imagination as being responsible for empirical associations, he does not
cite any specific laws nor claim that it is necessary for cognition, making it
difficult to know whether he is open to accepting Hume’s account of the
imagination.
Whereas in the first Critique Kant seems to view the workings of the
imagination as a “blind though indispensable function of the soul” (KrV
A78/B103), in the anthropology transcripts he provides some discussion of
how the imagination and its representations relate to the understanding.
Though it is difficult to discern a clear and consistent picture from the
various transcripts, he seems to think that we have one faculty for discover-
ing or comparing similar representations, namely wit (which is sometimes
translated as ingenuity), and another power for comparing dissimilar repre-
sentations, namely the power of judgment (UrtheilsKraft) (VA-Mrongovius
25:1262). Wit is thus responsible for finding the universal for a set of given
particulars, while the power of judgment seeks the particulars that fall
under a universal.25 Kant then goes on to provide a range of observations
about these two faculties. Wit is “fleeting,” while the power of judgment
is “slow and serious” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1263). Wit “has inspirations and
the power of judgment turns them into insight” (VA-Friedländer 25:517).
Kant also provides a taxonomy of deficient forms of wit and the power of
judgment, such that the former without the latter is silliness, while one
who simply lacks the latter is stupid. One can imagine the amusement
Kant’s students must have experienced in hearing such descriptions.
4. Understanding
One of the more distinctive contributions to the pragmatic dimension
of anthropology that can be found only in the anthropology transcripts
is Kant’s detailed description of the various “imperfections of the mind”
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1302 ff.). Kant distinguishes between mental frailty,
which one is born with, and mental illness, which concerns merely the
state of one’s mind and the improper use of one’s cognitive powers, which
are otherwise good in themselves. He notes that it is hard to distinguish
between a disturbed mind, which acts against established rules, and either
a silly person or a fool. Idiocy, which is a mental frailty that consists in
an innate inability to use one’s cognitive powers, and simplemindedness,
which is a lack of the power of judgment (VA-Mrongovius 25:1271), result
from an inability to check one’s judgment against that of others (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1303). Dementia, insanity, and lunacy are distinct kinds of
disturbance, where dementia that comes from seeing either an internal or an
external light is either fanaticism or spirit-seeing (VA-Mrongovius 25:1304).
But there are errors of our higher cognitive powers that do not count
as disturbances, such as folly, silliness, and foolishness (VA-Mrongovius
25:1305). Folly is the deviation from the rule of reason through the seduction
of the inclinations, whereas foolishness involves having too great a sense of
one’s worth and preferring evil over good.
Another idea that is new to the anthropology transcripts concerns the
perfection of cognition.26 Kant mentions the logical perfection of cog-
nition only once in the first Critique (at KrV A839/B866), but without
explaining what it is and using it only negatively to distinguish prior con-
ceptions of philosophy from his own. In the Friedländer and Mrongovius
transcripts, by contrast, Kant provides a detailed account of the perfection
25 See also the published Anthropology for Kant’s remarks on wit and the power of judgment (A 7:201).
26 Kant discusses the issue in his logic lectures as well. See VL-Philippi 24:360–363 and 24:517.
of cognition. In the Anthropologie Mrongovius, he begins by considering it
in three respects:
(a) With regard to the object, and here it is truth, magnitude, and dis-
tinctness. This is logical.
(b) With regard to the subject; here it is ease, liveliness, and interest; this
is aesthetic.
(c) With regard to the connection of cognitions with one another; here
it is diversity, order, and unity. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1224)27
Let us consider these three respects of the perfection of cognition in turn,
starting with the “logical” features of cognition, namely truth, magnitude,
and distinction.28
First, Kant calls truth “the greatest perfection of cognitions” (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1224) since it is an essential feature of cognition, and he
contrasts it with semblance (Schein).29 Though one might be tempted to
favor error in certain cases so as to be able to draw utility from it, that is
never acceptable, Kant argues, because “the utility of errors is only acciden-
tal and can quickly cease, and it is also always far too small to outweigh the
harms they bring about” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1226). Kant does not define
truth in the Anthropologie Mrongovius, but, interestingly, he refers to the
approbation of other human beings as the “popular criterion” of truth,
which he explicitly distinguishes from its “logical” criterion, which is pre-
sumably the adequacy of a representation to its object (VA-Mrongovius
25:1225).
Second, Kant’s discussion of the magnitude of cognition is relatively
brief, but the main point he emphasizes is that “the proper magnitude
of cognition is based on the comprehensiveness of its application, not on
its amount” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1227, translation modified). That is, it is
not the sheer number of cognitions that matters, but rather how useful
they are for us, whether it be by extending our cognition (as opposed
to simply repeating trivial cognition) or by cultivating our understanding
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1228). He also notes that the practical value of cognition
27 The Anthropologie Friedländer translates Leichtigkeit as “facility” rather than “ease.”
28 In the Anthropologie Friedländer, Kant refers not only to truth, certainty, and distinctness, but also
to the “size, completeness, and exactness of cognition” (VA-Friedländer 25:483). Certainty does not
refer to any special subjective state that would contrast with probability, but is rather equivalent
to truth. (For the sake of comparison, consider that Baumgarten defines the certainty of a thing
as the possibility of a clear cognition of its truth.) Size is presumably a synonym for magnitude.
Completeness and exactness are further interesting features of the object of the perfection of
cognition that Kant does not clarify.
29 In other writings, Kant seems to maintain the possibility of “false” cognition, suggesting that
cognition can be either wholly true or partially true and partially false, denying only that cognition
can be entirely false.
depends on our being able to exercise our advantages on the basis of it (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1228). Thus, whereas the first Critique sets as its epistemic
goal reason’s self-cognition or cognition of the unconditioned (or some
combination thereof ), the anthropology transcripts are directed toward
how cognition can be useful to us.
Third, Kant claims that the distinctness30 of cognition is of two kinds:
1. scholastic distinctness, where the work and the process through which the
distinctness is produced must be evident; and 2. Popular distinctness, where
just the opposite must happen and the labor must not be conspicuous at all.
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1227)
Distinctness both presupposes and is preceded by order (VA-Mrongovius

25:1227, 25:482), while it leads to truth and certainty (VA-Friedländer
25:483).
Regarding the perfection of cognition in relation to the subject, Kant
asserts that ease (or facility), liveliness, and interest are its defining features.
In short, the easier it is to acquire a cognition, and the more lively and more
interesting it is for the subject, the more perfect the cognition is, subjectively
speaking. He suggests that novelty, diversity, and appearance (Einkleidung)
are what make cognitions more perfect in this respect, especially insofar
as they allow our minds “to be influenced by moral principles” (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1228). Since the first Critique is nearly silent on these issues,
the anthropology transcripts go well beyond what the first Critique has to
offer on this question, even if they focus more on the pragmatic interests
that are at the heart of a pragmatic anthropology and, as a result, are less
focused on straightforwardly epistemic interests.31
The Anthropologie Mrongovius cites diversity, order, and unity as defin-
ing features of the relation of cognitions to each other with respect to the
perfection of cognition, while the Anthropologie Friedländer mentions asso-
ciation and contrast as well. It is unfortunate that Kant does not devote
30 Kant does not define distinctness in the anthropology lectures, but it is such a common phrase that
he may not have thought it necessary. Leibniz thinks we have a distinct perception when we can
explain the marks it has, whereas Baumgarten thinks that we have such a perception when we can
distinguish its marks.
31 We would go so far as to suggest that the aesthetic aspect of the perfection of a cognition is
not an epistemic feature of the cognition at all. For the fact that a cognition can be understood
with ease does not entail that the cognition has a firm, rational basis (which requires that the
cognition also possess objective, logical perfection). After all, many false beliefs are seductive in
their simplicity and straightforwardness. Since in general the degree to which a cognition possesses
aesthetic perfection does not tell us anything about whether the cognition also possesses epistemic
justification (logical perfection), aesthetic perfection is not an epistemic aspect of cognition, but
rather merely a pragmatic one.
more resources to explaining, for example, what exactly order is or the
different ways in which unity and diversity contribute to the perfection of
cognition.32 Though he remarks that order is a condition for distinctness
and that order must prevail in both our thought and our action, he does not
go into detail on what constitutes order (beyond stating that order requires
a rule). Instead, he limits himself to making miscellaneous remarks about
it (concerning, e.g., the order found in gardens or the prevalence of order
in Germans and its absence among the English) (VA-Friedländer 25:482).
What is especially lacking is any explicit connection to the kinds of relation
among cognitions that the first Critique envisions, such as systematicity.
Kant identifies error and ignorance as the opposites of the perfection
of cognition (VA-Friedländer 25:484).33 Ignorance is a mere privation of
cognition that is due to passivity or laziness (e.g. in failing to pass judgment
on an object), whereas error results from an act of the understanding (and
on the basis of obscure representations, i.e. representations of which one
is not conscious)34 rather than sensibility, which does not pass judgment
at all and thus cannot err.35 Thus, ironically, experimentation “is often
the mother of errors” (VA-Friedländer 25:484). Paradoxes are cognitions
that appear strange and one who issues paradoxes is “a daredevil” (VA-
Friedländer 25:484) because of the exposure to the possibility of winning
and losing. Interestingly, Kant’s position in the anthropology transcripts
is thus somewhat different from the first Critique, which is primarily, but
not exclusively, concerned with avoiding the error in metaphysics that is
occasioned by transcendental illusion, since in several passages in the first
Critique Kant attributes the source of error to sensibility and its influence
on the understanding (e.g., KrV A294/B350).
5. Conclusion
What the preceding discussion shows is that Kant’s anthropological
accounts of the faculties of sense, imagination, and understanding help
to illuminate how Kant understands the manifestation of these faculties
in concrete, actual, empirical cognition, thereby supplementing the tran-
scendental account presented in the Critique. Where the Critique explains
the necessary, a priori structures of cognition, the anthropology transcripts
32 For discussion of this issue, see Watkins (2013).

33 At VA-Mrongovius 25:1224 Kant sets error and ignorance in opposition to truth, but given truth’s
relation to cognition, there is no contradiction here.
34 At VA-Friedländer 25:516 Kant explains in some detail how ingenuity is the cause of error.
35 Kant presents an extensive “apology” for sensibility in the published Anthropology (A 7:143–6).
explain the contingent, empirical modes in which the faculties operate in
everyday cognition. For instance, the Critique informs us of the essential
forms of human cognition and reminds us that these forms will lie inert
without a sensory matter to fill them out. The anthropology transcripts,
by contrast, explain in some detail what sensory matter can do: “objective”
senses are necessary for the object-directedness of cognition; “noble” senses
are required for the intersubjectivity of our cognitions; and an “immedi-
ate” sense is required for the cognition of an object as substantial. The
Critique tells us that we must apply concepts relating associated events
in terms of rule-governed laws in order to represent them as cause and
effect. The anthropology transcripts, however, tell us how the imagination
contributes to this process by initially establishing the associations between
events. The Critique tells us that we achieve cognition of objects when we
make judgments in accordance with objectively valid rules and concepts.
The anthropology transcripts perform the pragmatic task of explaining the
different ways in which the understanding can be perfected, and also how
it can fall into deficiency. The empirical elaborations of Kant’s theory of
cognition found in the anthropology transcripts are therefore a valuable
resource for attaining a fuller understanding of Kant’s larger project.
cha pter 5
The anthropology of cognition and its

pragmatic implications
Alix Cohen
The aim of this chapter is to bring to light the anthropological dimension

of Kant’s account of cognition as it is developed in the Lectures on Anthro-
pology. I will argue that Kant’s anthropology of cognition develops along
two complementary lines. On the one hand, it studies nature’s intentions
for the human species – the ‘natural’ dimension of human cognition. On
the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise our cognitive
purposes – the ‘pragmatic’ dimension of human cognition. Insofar as it is
intended for us as embodied human agents whose cognition takes place
in the empirical world, it is concerned with the knowledge of the natu-
ral subjective conditions that help or hinder our cognition. Therefore, far
from portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account
not only acknowledges the empirical, contingent and messy features of our
cognition, it also helps us become better, more efficient knowers.
Yet the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic
dimension turns out to be problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology
is defined as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes
of himself, or can and should make of himself ’ (A 7:119), by contrast
with acting, cognising seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action.
However, I will show that Kant’s account of cognition makes room for a
form of epistemic control that is sufficient to account for the possibility of
its pragmatic dimension. I will conclude by drawing the implications of my
interpretation for our overall understanding of Kant’s account of cognition.
1. Nature’s intentions for human cognition

As Kant often notes in his anthropological works, there is a great variation
amongst human beings’ cognitive talents – there are the great geniuses
who ‘take new paths and open new prospects’, the mechanical minds who
advance ‘slowly on the rod and staff of experience’, the universal mind
who ‘grasps all the various sciences’, the superficial mind ‘who knows the
76
The anthropology of cognition and its pragmatic implications 77
Table 5.1. Varieties of understanding (VA-Friedländer 25:538–44)
Superior understanding Inferior understanding
Adroit Obtuse
(swift and ingenious) (slow and oblivious to fine differences)
Common Stupid
(judges concretely) (lack of natural understanding)
Correct Simpleminded
(originates concepts) (lack of natural understanding)
Mature Immature
(guided by another) (without another’s guidance)
titles of everything but not the contents’, the architectonic mind who
‘methodically examines the connection of all the sciences and how they
support one another’, the natural minds who think ‘out for themselves’,
and the gigantic erudite mind who misses ‘the eye of true philosophy’ (A
7:226–7).1 Although for Kant transcendental structures are common to
all human beings (and some even to all rational beings), their empirical
expression takes many different forms within what is generally called ‘the
mind’: ‘Under the mind, one thinks of the ability to think for oneself,
and this includes sound understanding, and the faculty and possession
of a correct power of judgment’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1308).2 For instance,
Table 5.1 presents the remarkable diversity of cognitive abilities afforded by
the empirical realisations of the transcendental faculty of understanding.
Other types of cognitive variations amongst human beings include vari-
ations in the following empirical abilities: self-consciousness, the ability
to foresee and remember, the ability to carry out extended logical infer-
ences; developmental variations: cognitive development, variations over
time within the lifespan of an individual; and cultural variations: variations
in cognitive cultures, historical environment and geographical setting.3
1 See also ‘Minds differ greatly in their ability to answer all three of these questions’, ‘What do I want?
(asks understanding). What does it matter? (asks the power of judgment). What comes of it? (asks
reason)’ (A 7:227–8).
2 As Schmidt has shown, ‘These transcendental structures are expressed within the subjectivity of an
empirical human individual as the configuration of his or her self-consciousness, external senses,
inner sense, imagination, and understanding as epistemic faculties. However, these faculties also
have an empirical operation in each human being, in response to specific intuitions, and these
empirical operations reflect the differences among individuals in their experiences, capacities, and
talents’ (Schmidt (2008), 472). Contrast with Catherine Wilson’s claim that ‘Kant was incapable of
registering particularities of mentality other than negatively’: ‘either human reason and action are
to be discussed in extra-empirical terms, or human cultural, psychological and physical diversity are
assessed as departures from an idealized and dematerialized norm’ (Wilson (1997), 264–5).
3 Respectively in A 7:130–4, 161–2, 182–9, 227, 127–8, 131–40, 162–5, 226, 311–20, 321–33 and 226.
78 Alix Cohen
Whilst there is no space to discuss the detail of these variations here, the
aim of this section is to focus on their cause and function. According to
Kant, the cognitive diversity that human beings exhibit is to be attributed
to nature’s intentions for the human species: ‘nature must have furnished
the human being with this [cognitive talents and gifts]’ (A 7:220). To
make sense of this claim, we must begin by understanding nature’s pur-
pose behind human beings’ diversity in general: ‘From various circum-
stances . . . we can discover certain predispositions from time to time and
infer from them what nature’s goal for humanity is’ (VA-Pillau 25:839).
As I will argue, the diversity of human beings’ cognitive talents should be
interpreted as nature’s means to secure the cognitive survival and progress
of the species.
Kant’s account of nature’s intentions for the human species has been the
object of numerous debates. As is well known, he often portrays nature as
having providential aspects that allow human beings to fulfil their moral
destiny: it ‘strives to give us an education that makes us receptive to
purposes higher than those that nature itself can provide’, and in par-
ticular ‘the subject of morality . . . the final purpose of creation to which
all of nature is subordinated’ (KU 5:433–6, translation modified). Whilst
Kant’s account of moral teleology is familiar, what is less so is that in his
anthropological works, he also portrays nature as aiming at the preser-
vation of the human species and the full development of its capacities:
since ‘in nature everything is designed to achieve its greatest possible per-
fection’, ‘Nature has also stored into her economy such a rich treasure of
arrangements for her particular purpose, which is nothing less than the
maintenance of the species’ (VA-Friedländer 25:694, A 7:310).4 A number
of human characteristics, including cognitive aptitudes, are thus defined
as being determined, at least partly, according to nature’s intentions for
the species: ‘Innate to human nature are germs which develop and can
achieve the perfection for which they are determined’ (VA-Friedländer
25:694). From the publication of the Observations (1764) through the Lec-
tures on Anthropology all the way to the Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View (1798), these germs (Keime), and natural predispositions
more generally (Anlagen), are classified under four categories: tempera-
ment, gender, nation and race. As shown in Table 5.2, each type within
these categories is the means to the realization of a particular purpose that
contributes to the realization of nature’s overall purpose for the human
4 For a detailed discussion of Kant’s account of nature’s intentions for the human species, see Cohen
(2009a), Chapter 5, section 1.
Table 5.2. Human types and nature’s purposes
Criterion Definition Type Nature’s purpose
Gender Sex Male, female

Reproduction and preservation
of the human species
Temperament Constitution of Sanguine, Diversity of human character
the body melancholic, (leading to social
choleric, antagonism) which secures
phlegmatic civil peace
Race Hereditary White, Negro, Diversity of biological character
transmitted Hindu, Hunnish– so as to be suited for all
features Mongolian– climates
Kalmuck
Nation Civil whole united French, English, Diversity of national character
through German, Italian, (leading to external war)
common etc. which secures international
descent peace
species.5 This purpose is twofold: on the one hand, the species’ progress is
accomplished through diversity amongst human beings, which generates
conflicts that lead to the development of their capacities. On the other
hand, its survival is secured because conflicts need to be regulated by civil
laws, which leads to peaceful cohabitation.
First, the function of the natural differences between the members of
the human species, whether in terms of race, temperament, gender or
nationality, is to cause an antagonism that generates the development of
their capacities – what Kant usually calls ‘unsociable sociability’ (Idea 8:20):
there is a principle of society and of sociability in the human being, but on
the other hand also a principle of unsociability and separation of society.
Here both principles collide with one another, which is, however, wisely
arranged by the Creator . . . This is the Creator’s special combination and
separation, from which the multiplicity arises, and from which the complete
perfection of the human race must afterwards be derived. (VA-Friedländer
25:586–7)6
For instance, the diversity of temperaments is one of the means nature
uses to generate conflict between human beings. Temperaments clash with
5 I have argued for this claim in Cohen (2006). For an exposition of the evolution of Kant’s account
of human characteristics in the Lectures on Anthropology, see Zammito’s contribution in this volume.
6 See also ‘The means nature employs in order to bring about the development of human beings’
natural predispositions is their antagonism in society’ (Idea 8:20). For a compelling account of the
concept of unsociable sociability, see Wood (1991).
80 Alix Cohen
each other: the sanguine is opposed to the melancholic, the choleric to the
phlegmatic, and temperaments of feeling are opposed to temperaments
of activity (see VA-Menschenkunde 25:1159; A 7:287). Their antagonism
leads them to strive to outdo each other, thus creating the conditions for
the development of their natural predispositions by ensuring that they
cultivate their capacities. In contrast, the Arcadian shepherd or the South
Sea Islander did not confront the problem of antagonism and as a result
failed to develop their talents. By leading to the progress of civilisation,
unsocial sociability is thus a decisive driving force in the development of
human beings’ natural dispositions:
Without this unsociability there would never have arisen a firm civil asso-
ciation, but at most only the arcadian life of a shepherd, i.e. a life full of
laziness with the best attitudes, whereby the human being would never be
perfected or cultivated and would not be more esteemed than any other
animal species. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1422)7
Yet the force of antagonism needs to be regulated if human beings are
to avoid self-destruction. It is the means to this regulation, peaceful civil
society, that allows them to secure their survival in a way that is compatible
with their ongoing progress:
unsociability drove human beings into the state where one strove for the
belongings of others and thereby came into collision with others, and because
of this they were required to elect to adopt a commanding head and in this
way to bring the systematic into the civil condition . . . The civil state is
therefore the only condition in which all the natural predispositions of
the human being can be developed. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1423; see also VA-
Friedländer 25:586; and VA-Pillau 25:845)
As a result, human beings’ diversity is nature’s means to secure both their
survival and their progress by compelling them to cultivate their capaci-
ties whilst creating the conditions of their peaceful cohabitation: ‘The great
masterpiece that nature has striven to bring forth through the perfect devel-
opment of the natural predispositions is the perfect, civil constitution or its
agreement with the ends of humanity’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1425–6). On this
basis, I would like to suggest that the general principle of nature just delin-
eated can be used to account for the diversity of human beings’ cognitive
7 The South Sea Islander ‘finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to give himself up
to pleasure than to trouble himself with enlarging and improving his fortunate natural predispo-
sitions . . . [He] let[s] his talents rust and [is] concerned with devoting his life merely to idleness,
amusement, procreation – in a word, to enjoyment’ (G 4:423). Through the obstacles they create for
each other, they are forced to work and develop their talents.
talents that this section started with. Namely, it should be interpreted as
nature’s means to secure the cognitive survival and progress of the species:
By means of the great difference of minds, in the way they look at exactly
the same objects and at each other, and by means of the friction between
them and the connection between them as well as their separation, nature
produces a remarkable drama of infinite variety on the stage of observers
and thinkers. (A 7:228)
First, the cognitive differences between human beings lead them to dis-
agree with each other, which ensures the development of their cognitive
capacities. Cognitive disagreements drive them to inquire further, seek new
evidence and search for additional support for their beliefs in order to win
arguments. Thereby, not only do they actually improve their chances of
reaching true beliefs and thus cognitive agreement, more importantly, by
doing so they also cultivate their cognitive talents. Second, to safeguard
cognitive exchanges in spite of ongoing disagreements, they have to be
regulated, and the most efficient means of doing so is by agreeing on pro-
cedures that allow their co-existence. Common epistemic standards make
it possible for their claims, methods and inquiries to be not only evalu-
ated by others but compared to each other. Whilst these procedures may
not actually settle disagreements, they provide an epistemic framework
within which they can cohabit peacefully. As a result, nature, which ‘has
arranged nothing in vain’ (VP 9:456), can be seen as using the cognitive
diversity amongst human beings to secure not only the survival but more
importantly the progress of the species towards its cognitive perfection.
However, if cognitive progress is nature’s purpose for human beings, the
function of their cognitive weaknesses remains to be accounted for. For
one may be tempted to think that it would be best realised if they were
all endowed with flawless intellects. Instead, as shown in Tables 5.3–5.5, as
well as having numerous cognitive strengths, human beings are naturally
endowed with a variety of cognitive weaknesses that are associated with
their temperament, nationality and gender.8 Nature has chosen to associate
most human types with their own brand of cognitive flaws (apart from,
perhaps, the masculine type, which seems to be immune from them)
because their respective cognitive strengths and weaknesses are intended to
8 I choose to leave out the case of races since it is problematic for a number of reasons. In particular,
some races seem to lack basic cognitive capacities. For instance, the Hindus ‘never raise it up to
abstract concepts’ (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1187), whilst ‘insensitive Americans [have] no prospects;
even the people of Mexico and Peru cannot be cultivated’ and ‘self-possessed Indians . . . can progress
in art but not in sciences and enlightenment’ (Reflexion 1520 [15:877–8]). For a discussion of Kant’s
account of race, see Cohen (2009a), 38–40; Larrimore (1999); and Eze (1995).
82 Alix Cohen
Table 5.3. Cognitive disparities between temperamentsa
Temperaments Strengths Weaknesses
Sanguine Popular, witty, lively Trivial, thoughtless, disorderly

Melancholic Profound, original, serious Obscure, dogmatic, obstinate,
punctilious
Choleric Methodical, precise, Incorrect, doesn’t bear contradiction,
keen-witted, orderly dogmatic
Phlegmatic Sweeping, talented imitator Laborious, superficial, procrastinator,
sluggish
a
VA-Friedländer 25:641, 25:644–7 and VA-Mrongovius 25:1237, 25:1373–6.
Table 5.4. Cognitive disparities between nationsa
Nations Strengths Weaknesses
French Daring, inspired, witty Risk-taking, superficial

German Methodical, orderly, Pedant, imitator, lacking judgment to apply rule
English Insightful, good judgment Disorderly
Russian Good apprentice Immature understanding
a
VA-Friedländer 25:483–5, 25:517, 25:542–3, 25:547, 25:647, 25:659; and VA-Mrongovius
25:1264, 25:1296, 25:1301.
Table 5.5. Cognitive variations between gendersa
Gender Strengths Weaknesses
Feminine Shrewd, good at investigating Immature about purposes, delicate,

other people, fine in assessing disposed for play, not good at
means, talent for ratiocinating investigating things and objects,
in the household agrees with common opinion, lacks
wisdom
Masculine Perfect in the sciences, thinks Nil
according to principles
a
VA-Friedländer 25:543, 25:705, 25:706, 25:722; VA-Mrongovius 25:1394.
complement each other in order to form a unified whole, as exemplified

by marital union:
in order for there to be a difference between the two sexes, and in order that
a unity would arise from the difference, the man must have strength there
where the woman has weakness, and weakness there where the woman has
strength. (VA-Friedländer 25:702)
Similarly, knowledge is a collaborative task where various talents are added
to the mix that is human cognition. The sanguine may have to suffer
thoughtlessness to allow for his liveliness, but it is the perfect comple-
ment to the melancholic’s profundity. The choleric’s keen-wittedness comes
together with his dogmatic tendencies, but it is the perfect complement to
the phlegmatic’s talent for imitation:
The talents are diverse: there is a critical talent, an historical one, a philo-
logical one, a philosophical one, a mathematical and mechanical talent,
etc. Whoever is excellent in one talent, is not necessarily for that reason
excellent in all of them. For the kinds of cognition involved are diverse.
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1308–9)
A methodical mind such as the choleric’s may not be capable of creative
leaps like the sanguine, just as the reliable judgment of the English may be
incapable of the inspired insights of the French. But from ‘the standpoint
of the great portrait of human nature’ (Beo 2:227), nature has intended to
realise the cognitive unity of the species by spreading out cognitive talents
amongst various types of knowers:
through what means is the greatest unity and social union possible? Not
through uniformity, but through difference. True union is based on the
lack [of something] by one party, and possession of it by the other party. If
that is now combined, then a whole of the complete, friendly union arises.
(VA-Friedländer 25:702)
However, whilst the collaborative dimension of human knowledge accounts
for the variety of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, why has nature chosen
not only to create obtuse, stupid, simpleminded or immature minds, but
also to make clear minds ‘fairly common’, acute power of judgment ‘a
greater rarity’, and inventive judgment ‘very rare’ (A 7:227–8)? Surprisingly
perhaps, Kant approves of the fact that great minds are in short supply: ‘very
few human beings think this way [well-grounded thinking, which is the
finest mode of thought], which is also actually good’ (VA-Busolt 25:1482).
For nature cannot count on people having the right kind of principles,
whether theoretical or practical:
There are very few people who conduct themselves in accordance with
principles, which is on the whole good, since it is so easy to err with these
principles, and then the ensuing disadvantage extends all the further, the
more general the principle is and the more steadfast the person who has set
it before himself is. (Beo 2:227)
Nature can more reliably attribute the finest minds to a chosen few and
assign the rest a supportive role in the equilibrium of the species – and this
84 Alix Cohen
is true of cognition as well as more generally. The progress of cognition is
only a small, albeit important, part of the overall progress of the species.
Whilst it is accomplished most notably by great minds such as Newton,
Linnaeus or Galileo, cognitively weaker minds carry out other dimensions
of human progress through their own brand of skills:
Genius can be opposed to the mechanical mind. Genius creates epochs;
however, the mechanical mind is still more useful, since it creates regular
order. A mechanical mind is commonplace. Genius appears to be based on
a kind of disproportion in the cognitive power. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1312)
Human beings have a variety of needs beyond cognitive ones, and they
can be best addressed by those who may lack cognitive skills but excel in
other domains. Different talents, or lack thereof, fulfil different functions
in nature’s scheme so that what looks like a weakness at the level of an
individual turns out to be a strength at the level of the species: ‘the greatest
ills arise when one thinks consistently with false principles. They nonethe-
less remain of great importance’ (VA-Busolt 25:1482). For instance, as Kant
writes in the case of imperfections due to gender:
We now come to an instance [the difference of the two sexes] where very
many apparent imperfections, which have their basis in nature, appear to
us, and where philosophy must be employed in order to see that these
imperfections are purposive and have to do with nature. (VA-Friedländer
25:697)
Since we should ‘expect nothing in nature and its laws but what is purposive
in the whole’ (KU 5:379), nature’s seemingly counter-productive distribu-
tion of cognitive strengths and weaknesses is the means to its overall aim,
the progress of human cognition.
2. The pragmatic dimension of Kant’s anthropology of cognition

However, the realisation of nature’s aim requires more than the mere exis-
tence of the diversity of human talents; these talents need to be cultivated,
and it is our responsibility to do so above and beyond the effects of natural
antagonism:
nature has after all placed the germs in these plants, and it is merely a matter
of proper sowing and planting that these germs develop in the plants. The
same holds true with human beings. Many germs lie within humanity, and
now it is our business to develop the natural dispositions proportionally and
to unfold humanity from its germs and to make it happen that the human
being reaches his vocation. (VP 9:445)
According to Kant, we have to develop, cultivate and strengthen our natural
capacities, as expressed in the maxim ‘Cultivate your powers of mind and
body so that they are fit to realise any ends you might encounter’ (MS
6:392–3).9 We not only can but ought to cultivate our minds in some way,
and this is so in spite of the fact that, as I have shown, we have no control
over the kind of cognitive talents we are naturally endowed with.
Rather than leaving us alone with this task, Kant’s lectures on anthro-
pology provide the empirical knowledge we need to succeed and reach
our vocation. Whilst nature creates our dispositions according to the pur-
poses it sets for us, in order to realize our perfection we need to know
how to best develop and utilize them. In this sense, Kant’s anthropology
of cognition develops along two complementary lines. On the one hand,
as I have spelt out in the preceding section, it studies nature’s purposes
for the human species – the natural dimension of human cognition. On
the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise our cognitive
vocation – the pragmatic dimension of human cognition. This pragmatic
dimension consists in spelling out the natural subjective conditions that
help or hinder our cognition, thereby enabling us to become more cogni-
tively efficacious. To illustrate this claim, I will examine the case of human
temperaments.
Since, as already suggested, each type of temperament comes with its
own brand of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, the knowledge of our
temperament is a crucial help to the progress of our cognition. It enables
us not only to be conscious of the pitfalls we face, but also to know how
best to use our strengths and improve upon our weaknesses.10 For instance,
as Kant writes:
The question thus is, what is better, to carry out one’s work in a short time,
in order to have the remaining time entirely for leisure, or to carry out the
same work very gradually over a long time, without having time left over for
leisure? The difference is based on people’s temperaments. (VA-Friedländer
25:488)
9 See also ‘the human being has a duty to cultivate the crude predispositions of his nature, by which
the animal is first raised into the human being. It is therefore a duty in itself. But this duty is a
merely ethical one, that is, a duty of wide obligation’ (MS 6:391–2). Being a wide duty, it can be
realised in many different ways, and it is up to us to choose the form and the extent it should take,
for ‘no rational principle prescribes specifically how far one should go in cultivating one’s capacities
(in enlarging or correcting one’s capacity for understanding, i.e., in acquiring knowledge or skill)’
(MS 6:392). Note that the limits and aims of the cultivation of the mind remain open-ended insofar
as it is ‘not possible to determine what degree is required for the average of the sound understanding
and sound reason, and of all the powers of mind’ (VA-Friedländer 25:548).
10 See for instance VA-Friedländer 25:522, VA-Mrongovius 25:1275, and A 7:186.
86 Alix Cohen
First, negatively, since depending on our temperament we have the ten-
dency to make certain kinds of error, have weak capacities or even lack
certain powers (see Table 5.3), knowing our temperament can make our
cognitive endeavours more reliable by pointing to potential pitfalls. The
awareness of our cognitive weaknesses thus enables us to be more responsive
to them and thereby less likely to fail or err. It reveals domains where our
temperament is pointing in the direction of error (for instance, the melan-
cholic is dogmatic), and, conversely, domains where our temperament is
pointing away from error (for instance, the choleric is precise). On the
basis of this knowledge, the melancholic should be mindful of the fact that
he might be blind to other points of view, whilst the choleric can safely rely
on the details of his calculations. Similarly, since the sanguine is witty and
lively of spirit but lacks profundity, he should be attentive to the fact that
his cognitive endeavours will require ‘more investigation and seriousness’
(VA-Friedländer 25:641, 25:644–7; and VA-Mrongovius 25:1237, 25:1373–6).
Or to take an example that Kant is particularly keen on, people’s capacity
for memory will exhibit different strengths and weaknesses depending on
their temperament:11 ‘Sanguine people have an adroit and vivid memory,
phlegmatic people have a slow and lasting (tenax) memory. Choleric peo-
ple have a memory that is faithful but does not grasp easily (non capax).
Melancholics have a vast and faithful memory’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1276).
On this basis, the phlegmatic should not rely on memories that he acquired
too quickly, whilst the melancholic can. Taking account of it in their cogni-
tive endeavours will make them more efficient, more reliable and generally
more successful.
Second, positively, being aware of our temperament is helpful to deter-
mine the course of action that is best for our cognition: which talent
needs cultivating, which capacity needs improving, which endeavour we
should engage in and which we should avoid. For instance, since the
melancholic, whilst profound and serious, lacks a certain ‘liveliness of the
spirit’ (VA-Friedländer 25:641), he should avoid disciplines that require it,
such as scientific popularisation.12 By contrast, the sanguine is particularly
11 Famously, it is the example he uses to illustrate the purpose of pragmatic anthropology in the
Anthropology’s introduction: ‘if he uses perceptions concerning what has been found to hinder or
stimulate memory in order to enlarge it or make it agile, and if he requires knowledge of the human
being for this, then this would be a part of anthropology with a pragmatic purpose, and this is
precisely what concerns us here’ (A 7:119).
12 ‘He who determines his horizon aesthetically seeks to arrange science according to the taste of the
public, i.e., to make it popular, or in general to attain only such cognitions as may be universally
communicated, and in which the class of the unlearned, too, find pleasure and interest’ (VL-Jäsche
24:40–1, original emphasis).
well suited to it since he is lively and witty. Moreover, since certain tem-
peraments have the tendency to weaken the use of particular capacities,
specific cognitive measures can be taken to strengthen them. For instance,
since choleric temperaments are more prone to passions than others, Kant
recommends that they refine them so as to improve their capacity for self-
control. Similarly, phlegmatics should work on their short-term memory
by recording little and striving to remember many things, whilst cholerics
should develop their speed by using the understanding to help remember
topics and frameworks (VA-Mrongovius 25:1275).
Needless to say, I could list many other examples from Kant’s Lectures
on Anthropology. But I believe that what I have argued so far suffices to
conclude that the anthropological knowledge of temperaments, and of the
empirical features of human cognition more generally, is essential to the
successful realisation of our cognitive endeavours.13 Of course, it does not
entail that we cannot possibly realise them without it, but rather that this
knowledge enables us to be more efficient and reliable knowers. However,
as I will discuss in the following section, the idea that Kant’s anthropology
of cognition has a pragmatic dimension turns out to be problematic.
3. The condition of possibility of the pragmatic dimension of

Kant’s anthropology of cognition
As exemplified by my account of temperaments in the preceding sec-
tion, Kant’s conception of anthropology is literally practical: since one
‘calls all practical knowledge of the human being “pragmatic” insofar as
it serves to fulfill our overall aims’, ‘Anthropology is thus a pragmatic
knowledge of what results from our nature’ (VA-Menschenkunde 25:855–6,
VA-Friedländer 25:471).14 It comprises advice, recommendations, counsels,
guidance, warnings and even admonitions as to how to develop and apply
our capacities and skills in the most efficient ways, including cognitive ones.
In particular, it identifies the different types of cognitive derangement that
13 For a sceptical take on the usefulness of these typological descriptions, see Zammito’s contribution:
‘it was not clear how much value in the world these typologies might have had for his students’
(p. 239).
14 ‘The second part of knowledge of the world is knowledge of human beings, who are considered
inasmuch as their knowledge is of interest to us in life. Therefore human beings are not studied
in speculative terms, but pragmatic, in the application of their knowledge according to rules of
prudence, and this is anthropology’ (VA-Friedländer 25:470). See also VA-Pillau 25:733; VA-Collins
25:9; VA-Menschenkunde 25:853–4; and VA-Mrongovius 25:1209. This knowledge has an extremely
broad scope: it discloses ‘the sources of all the [practical] sciences, the science of morality, of skill,
of human intercourse, of the way to educate and govern human beings, and thus of everything that
pertains to the practical’ (C 10:145).
88 Alix Cohen
afflict the faculties of human cognition and suggests various ways of over-
coming them. For instance, it examines the decreasing, weakening and
entire loss of the senses and the soul’s weaknesses and illnesses with respect
to its cognitive faculty.15 It recommends numerous ways of improving the
use of cognitive faculties: memory, sensory perception, understanding,
judgment, reason, imagination, wisdom and so on:16
The particular culture of the powers of the mind . . . includes the culture of
the cognitive faculty, of the senses, of the imagination, of the memory,
of the strength of attention and wit, in short what concerns the lower powers
of the understanding . . . as concerns the higher powers of understanding,
they include the culture of the understanding, of the power of judgment,
and of reason. (VP 9:475)
It is thus one of the aims of Kant’s anthropology of cognition to instruct
us how to cultivate our cognitive capacities so as to make the best use
of them – note that Kant repeatedly talks of ‘the use of understanding
and reason’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1261), ‘the use of reason’ (VA-Friedländer,
25:545; VA-Busolt, 25:1481), ‘the use of the understanding’ (VL-Jäsche 9:74,
original emphasis) or the ‘purposive use of [the faculty of cognition]’ (KU
5:295).
However, the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic
dimension is problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology is defined as
‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can
and should make of himself ’ (A 7:119), cognising by contrast with acting,
seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action:
In most cases, such a procedure of giving our approval, or withdrawing it,
or holding it back[,] does not rest at all on our free choice, but rather is
necessitated through and by the laws of our understanding and our reason.
(VL-Blomberg 24:156)
Whether we believe, what we believe and why we believe are not up to us
since the idea of the will controlling beliefs makes no sense: ‘The will does
not have any influence immediately on holding-to-be-true; this would be
quite absurd’ (VL-Jäsche 9:74). If this is correct, it entails that we have no
control over much of our cognition. Yet without some degree of control, the
possibility of a pragmatic dimension of Kant’s anthropology of cognition is
in jeopardy: ‘If we do not have [the powers of the mind] under the control
15 VA-Friedländer 25:499–502, 25:544–5; VA-Mrongovius 25:1302–8; A 7:165–75, 7:202–21.

16 Respectively in VA-Friedländer 25:521–4, 25:499–502, 25:541–4, 25:515–21, 25:545–54, 25:514–5,
25:621–2; VA-Mrongovius 25:1273–7, 25:1253–5, 25:1296–302, 25:1263–72, 25:1258–62, 25:1296–7; A
7:182–6, 7:149–51, 7:162–6, 7:197–202, 7:167–74, 7:228–9. For details on the improvement of the
general cognitive faculty, see Schmidt (2004).
of the free power of choice, all provisions for such perfection are thus in
vain’ (VA-Friedländer 25:488). How can we hope to perfect our cognitive
capacities or develop our cognitive talents if we have no control over our
cognition, whether in terms of processes, operations, or faculties? The aim
of this section is to show that Kant makes room for a form of control that
is sufficient to account for the possibility of a pragmatic anthropology of
cognition.
To begin with, Kant acknowledges that we do have control over the
inquiries that give rise to our cognitive judgments: ‘Holding-to-be-true
pertains to the understanding, but investigation to the faculty of choice’
(VL-Dohna-Wundlacken 24:736).17 It is up to us to determine whether to
investigate a matter, how deep, for how long, what direction the inquiry
takes, when we are satisfied with the results, and so on:
although approval does not depend immediate on men’s choice, it never-
theless often does depend on it indirecte, mediately, since it is according to
one’s free wish that he seeks out those grounds that could in any way bring
about approval for this or that cognition . . . it still requires closer direction
of choice, will, wish, or in general of our free will, toward the grounds of
proof. (VL-Blomberg 24:158, original emphasis)
Although beliefs differ from actions in some respects, acquiring beliefs
entails the same processes as choosing how to act. They both require acts
of the will, whether it is deliberating, weighing up options, or selecting the
course of action that is best suited to our ends. As exemplified by scien-
tific investigations, we can control the understanding, albeit indirectly, to
the extent that our cognitive inquiries are led by the will: ‘Insofar as the
will either impels the understanding toward inquiry into a truth or holds
it back therefrom, however, one must grant it an influence on the use of
the understanding’ (VL-Jäsche 9:74, original emphasis). Moreover, we have
the capacity to control and withhold approval: ‘In suspensio judicii there
lies some freedom’ (VL-Blomberg 24:736). Kant calls it a form of freedom
because it is the capacity to resist the influence of inclinations on judg-
ment, a capacity akin to the will’s independence from the determination
of desires.18 Inclinations hinder cognition just as they hinder morality, as
suggested by the analogy between the cause of moral vice and that of false
belief:
17 See also ‘Judicia reflectentia are those which introduce investigation, which show (i.) whether a matter
needs investigation, (2.) how I ought to investigate a matter’ (VL-Dohna-Wundlacken 24:737).
18 Kant sometimes calls our independence from the determination of desires the ‘culture of discipline’,
which ‘is negative and consists in the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires, a despotism
that rivets us to certain natural things and renders us unable to do our own selecting’ (KU 5:
432).
90 Alix Cohen
Deviation from the rules of the pure will constitutes the morally evil, and
this arises only when and because other effects of other powers mingle
with the otherwise pure laws of the will. E.g.: The inclinations and affects.
Just in this way, when foreign powers mingle with the correct laws of the
understanding, a mixed effect arises, and error arises from the conflict of
[this with] our judgments based on the laws of the understanding and of
reason. (VL-Blomberg 24:102)
Insofar as they are ‘foreign powers’, inclinations are the cause of our errors.19
First, they interfere with the proper functioning of our cognitive faculties
and thereby hinder the acquisition of knowledge.20 Second, they preclude
thorough epistemic investigations by giving us an unwarranted feeling of
certainty and thereby corrupting our cognitive diligence.21 Finally, they
prompt us to adopt beliefs on illegitimate grounds, for instance because
they suit our taste or our wishes.22 The inclinations are thus an illness of
the mind, at least as far as cognition is concerned. They produce illusions,
unwarranted beliefs and false cognitions. They give rise to illegitimate epis-
temic procedures. They interfere with, misguide and distort the operations
of our cognitive faculties in their pursuit of knowledge: ‘Through these
[inclinations] we are transposed into a condition most unsuitable for judg-
ing’ (VL-Vienna 24:842). As a result, a cognitive agent who can control
his inclinations is more efficient in the sense that he will be better armed
to carry out his cognitive purposes: ‘Our perfection consists therein, that
we are able to subjugate our faculties and capacities to the free power of
choice’ (VA-Friedländer 25:485–6). This is why an essential part of Kant’s
anthropology of cognition spells out how to facilitate, enhance and when
necessary restore the will’s control over our cognitive powers:
We must therefore always take care to have our mental powers under our
control, and this must already occur in early youth. We must thus not let
sensibility dominate, but rather discipline it through the understanding,
[so] that we can use it if and however it is conducive to our understanding.
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1231–2)
19 ‘One of the most outstanding causes, however, that very frequently misleads man into making a
false judgment, or even into an error, is the affects’ (VL-Blomberg 24:159–60, original emphasis).
20 For instance, ‘Everything that stimulates and excites us serves to disadvantage our power of judg-
ment’ (VL-Blomberg 24:60).
21 For instance, ‘In young minds this inclination to accept the seeming as true is so great that they
find it very hard to withhold their judgment’ (VL-Vienna 24:860).
22 For instance, ‘inclination occasions us always to undertake examinations and investigations only
from one side, and of course only from the side where we wish that it were so and not otherwise,
and thus it occasions us to leave the other side, which might perhaps provide us with grounds for
the opposite, completely uninvestigated’ (VL-Blomberg 24:167, original emphasis).
However, it is unclear that the capacity to resist the influence of inclinations
is sufficient to account for the possibility of the pragmatic dimension of
Kant’s anthropology of cognition. For we need to distinguish between two
types of control: the control of cognition from the outside (e.g. whether
or not to inquire, what to inquire about, etc.) and the control of cognition
from within (e.g. a priori laws, epistemic principles, etc.). Whilst the former
is concerned with what motivates cognitive inquiries, the latter alone is
strictly speaking cognitive. Yet both are necessary to secure the pragmatic
dimension of Kant’s account, for the idea of making our cognition more
efficient is meaningless if we have no control over the the functioning of
our cognitive powers.
Yet although we lack direct control over cognition and its a priori laws, we
have indirect control over it through our epistemic principles. This control
occurs at the level of the maxims of judgment; that is to say, the rules that
are necessary to direct thought in the pursuit of knowledge: ‘the issue here
is not the faculty of cognition, but the way of thinking needed to make a
purposive use of it’ (KU 5:295, original emphasis). Kant calls it the sensus
communis, which consists in three ‘maxims of common understanding’ that
spell out universal rules that guide knowledge acquisition in order to avoid
‘error in general’ (VL-Jäsche 9:57).23 Whilst it is unnecessary to go into the
details of these maxims here, what is crucial for my present purpose is that
they are second-order epistemic principles whose role is to guide belief-
acquisition and cognitive procedures more generally – what Kant calls ‘the
principles of thinking’ (VA-Busolt 25:1480).24 Crucially, all our cognitive
improvement requires is the ability to choose our way of thinking, as spelt
out by the maxim that commands free autonomous thought: ‘The maxim
of thinking for oneself can be called the enlightened mode of thought’ – ‘it is
only using your own reason as the supreme touchstone of truth’ (VL-Jäsche
9:57, original emphasis; VA-Busolt 25:1481). Thereby we are able to guide
the operations of our cognitive powers, which is sufficient to secure the
possibility of the pragmatic dimension of the anthropology of cognition.
Whether we acquire beliefs according to principles at all, just as which
principles we choose to adopt, is under our voluntary control. Of course,
23 These maxims are: ‘1. Thinking for oneself. 2. Thinking in the place of another. 3. Always thinking
in agreement with oneself ’ (VA-Busolt 25:1480). For other formulations of these maxims, see KU
5:294–5; and A 7:228. For a thorough discussion of the content of these maxims, see McBay Merritt
(2011), section 2; Wood (2002), 103; and O’Neill (1989), Chapters 1–2.
24 In fact, it is the aim of university education to instil students with the correct epistemic principles:
‘instruction in universities is properly this, to cultivate the capacity of reason, and to get [students]
into the habit of the method of ratiocinating, and to establish the appropriate maxims of reason’
(VA-Friedländer 25:547).
92 Alix Cohen
if we fail to regulate, control or direct our cognitive practices according
to the right epistemic principles, our mind stops being its own guide and
it produces unwarranted judgments. By contrast, directing our cognitive
powers according to rules spelt out by reason is the only means of getting
closer to our cognitive perfection:
The greatest perfection of the powers of the mind is based on our subordi-
nating them to our power of choice, and the more they are subjugated to
the free power of choice, all the greater perfection of the powers of the mind
do we possess. (VA-Friedländer 25:488)25
4. Conclusion
This chapter set out to show that there is a crucial anthropological dimen-
sion to Kant’s account of cognition that has been unacknowledged until
now. It consists in the examination of our natural cognitive capacities
with the pragmatic purpose of enabling us to become better, more effi-
cient knowers in order to fulfil our cognitive vocation. Therefore, far from
portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account of
cognition takes into account their empirical, contingent and messy fea-
tures. These features, I have argued, comprise the subjective dimension of
cognition that results from our nature as embodied beings whose cognition
takes place in the natural world.26
The fundamental implication of my claim for our overall understanding
of Kant’s account of cognition is that it consists of three parts that are
equally essential. First, it spells out the a priori forms of cognition that are
valid for all rational cognizers (e.g. the fact that reason naturally enters a
dialectic). Second, it investigates the a priori forms of cognition that are
valid for rational human cognizers (e.g. the fact that we do not have an
intuitive understanding or that we have a spatio-temporal form of intu-
ition). And third, it examines the empirical conditions that are valid for
embodied rational human cognizers (e.g. the fact that we have a particu-
lar temperament, personal history or set of relationships).27 In this sense,
25 See also ‘the greatest perfection of man is that of being able to act according to his power of choice,
to direct his cognition to an object and again turn away from it. This is also the first condition of
all rules and precepts that I should uphold and practise; for if this is missing, I am also not able to
direct myself according to rules’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1231).
26 Contrast with ‘in the veins of the knowing subject, such as . . . Kant [has] construed him, flows not
real blood but rather the thinned fluid of reason as pure thought activity’ (Dilthey (1922), viii).
27 Note that the function of anthropology in Kant’s account of cognition is analogous to that of
moral anthropology in his ethics. For as I have argued elsewhere, Kant’s ethics can be divided
along the following lines. First, the project that produces an a priori system of duties for rational
Kant’s familiar transcendental account, which expounds the a priori rules
of cognition for human cognizers, is supplemented by a pragmatic part
that expounds the empirical dimension of cognition for human cognizers.
Whilst the former refers to our transcendental, objective cognitive condi-
tion (e.g. we have a discursive understanding, a spatio-temporal form of
intuition, etc.), the latter refers to our empirical, subjective cognitive con-
dition (e.g. we have emotions, temperaments, histories and cultures, sets of
relationships, etc.).28 By spelling out the conditions of possibility, function
and content of Kant’s anthropological account of cognition, I have tried
to show that because of our cognitive nature as embodied human beings,
we need not only a critique of pure reason, but also an anthropology of
empirical reason: a pragmatic account of how we can, should and ought to
cognize insofar as we are embodied human beings.
agents in general: by focusing on pure practical rationality alone, it is completely independent of

any empirical knowledge of human nature (Groundwork, Critique of Practical Reason). Second,
the project that generates an a priori system of the duties that are binding upon a particular type
of agent, namely human agents: by presupposing certain empirical features of human nature and
the human world more generally, it is not completely independent of our empirical knowledge of
human nature (Metaphysics of Morals). And third, the project that examines the worldly helps and
hindrances to human moral agency: it spells out the empirical helps and hindrances to moral agency
(Anthropology and Lectures on Anthropology) – what Kant calls ‘the subjective conditions in human
nature’ (MS 6:217). See Cohen (2009a), 89–90.
28 As Arens has noted, whilst ‘Kant’s mind model from the Critiques was not intended to be prag-
matic – it did not accommodate the variances arising from the contact of individual minds with
unique historical environments’, ‘Kant’s Anthropology added to this ahistorical model the additional
dimension of affects, or personal habits of mind conditioned by personal and historical experience’
(Arens (1990), 202–3).
cha pt er 6
Affects and passions

Patrick R. Frierson
This chapter draws from Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of

View and Lectures on Anthropology to develop a Kantian account of the
affects and passions in the light of Kant’s empirical psychology. In particular,
I focus on two key claims about affects and passions from Kant’s published
writings. First, in his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claims that while affects
are merely a “lack of virtue,” passions are “properly evil” (MS 6:408, original
emphasis). Second, in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,
Kant distinguishes between affects and passions as follows:
Inclination that can be conquered only with difficulty or not at all by the
subject’s reason is passion. On the other hand, the feeling of a pleasure or
displeasure in the subject’s present state that does not let him to rise to
reflection . . . is affect. (A 7:251, original emphasis)
This passage highlights a couple of important distinctions between affects

and passions, most notably that passions are disordered inclinations while
affects are disordered feelings. By providing a psychological account of
affects and passions in terms of feeling and inclination, this chapter aims
to make sense of Kant’s moral assessment of each.
After the first section summarizing changes in Kant’s treatments of affects
and passions during the twenty years he lectured on the topic, I offer a brief
account of Kant’s empirical psychology in general. Sections 3 and 4 provide
detailed accounts of the psychology of affects and passions (respectively)
based on what I take to be his most developed statements about them, and
section 5 applies this psychology to the moral assessment of each.
1. Kant’s developing views on affects and passions

in the anthropology lectures
Two key claims about affects and passions, present in the quotation from the
Anthropology above, go back all the way to Kant’s earliest anthropological
94
Affects and passions 95
treatments of them: his general definition of affects and passions as states of
feeling or desire that preclude reflection and his association of affects and
passions respectively with the faculties of feeling and of desire/inclination.
Both claims are already present in Kant’s earliest lectures on anthropology.
The Collins notes from Kant’s first course in anthropology (1772–3) lay
out his core definition of affects and passions: “A desire that is so big that it
makes it impossible to compare the object of our desire with the sum of all
inclination, is called affect” (VA-Collins 25:210; see too VA-Parow 25:411,
from the same year). And Kant goes on to lay out his key distinction
between them, appealing to “an English author,” whom he later identifies
as Hutcheson (see VA-Friedländer 25:589; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115), as
the source of the distinction:
An English author distinguished, and rightly so, the affects and the passions
[Leidenschafft, oder Passion]. Passion is a desire, that makes us incapable
of seeing the sum of all desires; affect is rather a feeling, which makes us
incapable – of consulting the sum of all feelings. (VA-Collins 25:212–13; cf.
VA-Parow 25:413)
Both claims persist throughout Kant’s lecture courses in anthropology.1
Despite this apparent uniformity, however, Kant’s account of affects and
passions changes from his early lectures through his published Anthropology.
The first and most striking change is an increasing consistency in dis-
tinguishing affects from passions. As the passages cited from Collins make
clear, Kant’s early lectures, while formally distinguishing affects from pas-
sions, fail to remain consistent on this distinction. Thus Kant’s definition
of affect at VA-Collins 25:210 (also VA-Parow 25:411) identifies affects not
with feelings but with desires, precisely the way he later distinguishes passions
from affects (see A 7:265; VA-Collins 25:212; VA-Mrongovius 25:1339). And
this conflation of affect and passion is not a mere accident of these early
lectures. In Parow (also 1772–3), Kant explicitly says, “In German, one
calls affect passion” (VA-Parow 25:412). There, Kant treats Affekt as a Latin
(affectus) or perhaps even English (“affect” or “affection”) term, for which
Leidenschaft (passion) is the appropriate German translation.2 Throughout
these early lectures, Kant uses “affect” and “passion” as synonyms, and gives
examples (such as anger) that he calls both “affect” and “passion.”
In these early lectures, then, Kant’s introduction of the distinction
between affects and passions has something of the importance that a similar
1 See e.g. VA-Friedländer 25:589; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115; VA-Mrongovius 25:1339; VA-Busolt 25:1526.
2 Brandt (1999), in its note for A 7:251.17–19, points out that the German translation of Baumgarten’s
Metaphysica translates affectus in §679 as Leidenschaften.
96 Patrick R. Frierson
distinction in his initial source – Francis Hutcheson – had. In his Essay on
the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1742, translated into
German in 1760), Hutcheson introduces his distinction between affects
and passions with the phrase, “When the word Passion is imagined to
denote anything different from the Affections” (Hutcheson (2002 [1742]),
28), a phrase that rightly highlights the casual nature of the distinction
in Hutcheson himself. And Hutcheson’s actual distinction between the
concepts – that passion
includes, beside the Desire or Aversion . . . a confused Sensation either of
Pleasure or Pain, occasioned or attended by some violent bodily Motions,
which keeps the Mind much employed upon the present Affair . . . and
prolongs or strengthens the Affection sometimes to such a degree, as to
prevent all deliberate Reasoning about our Conduct (ibid., original emphasis)
– is almost the reverse of Kant’s own. Hutcheson does make an impor-

tant distinction between desire and mere sensation that is akin to Kant’s
distinction between desire and feeling, but Hutcheson’s whole account of
affections and passions treats them – as Kant does in these early lectures –
as synonymous. And Hutcheson sees neither affections nor passions as pre-
cluding reflection in the way that Kant does. Kant seems to have combined
his reading of Hutcheson on affects and passions with his own emerging
faculty psychology to develop a distinction that he ascribes in these early
lectures to Hutcheson, but that is truly his own. In these early lectures,
however, Kant follows Hutcheson in being casual about the distinction,
making it but then virtually ignoring it throughout his discussion.
Over time, however, the faculty-based distinction between affect and
passion becomes more prominent. In the Friedländer Lectures (1775–6),
Kant continues to conflate affects and passions in certain respects, describ-
ing “anger,” for instance, in some places as a passion (VA-Friedländer 25:612)
and in others as an affect (VA-Friedländer 25:599). But Kant develops the
distinction in terms of feeling and desire in much greater detail in these
lectures. He follows up his introduction of this distinction with an expla-
nation of its implications, noting in particular that passions are oriented
towards “what is possible and future” and affects towards “the present,” and
Kant uses this distinction to differentiate particular emotions: “Thus fright
is a state of feeling . . . therefore it pertains to affect. Longing, however, is
a passion. Sadness is an affect. Obsessive ambition is a passion” (VA-
Friedländer 25:589). And his overall treatment is distinguished into discus-
sions of affects and then of passions, without the general conflation of terms
in the previous lectures. In Pillau (1777–8), we find very clear statements
of the distinct definitions of affect and passion, the former as an incapacity
“to compare a feeling with the sum of all feelings” and the latter as the state
“when we lose the capacity to compare an inclination with the sum of all
inclinations” (VA-Pillau 25:801). Kant experiments with developing a con-
ceptual distinction between “at peace” (ruhig) and “content” (zufrieden)
to distinguish states of being without affect and without passion. And
Kant generally distinguishes between examples of each emotional state,
though again treats anger as both affect and passion (VA-Pillau 25:802). In
later lectures, the distinction sharpens, culminating in the clear contrast of
Mrongovius (25:1339–40), Busolt (25:1526) and the published Anthropology
(A 7:251). The Busolt lectures, delivered in 1788–9, go so far as to claim
that “where there is much affect, there is little passion, and vice versa” (VA-
Busolt 25:1526), a far cry from the claim sixteen years earlier that Leidenschaft
(“passion”) is merely the German term for affect (Affekt) (VA-Parow 25:412).
Along with the increased emphasis on his faculty-based distinction
between affects and passions, Kant also develops further distinctions
between the two. Two of the most important developments relate to the
different temporality of affects and passions.3 Affects are seen as rooted
in the present and of short duration; while passions are oriented towards
the future and of long duration. In the earliest lectures, both affects and
passions are conceived of as being temporary, even fleeting. Thus the
Friedländer notes claim, “Both affects [and] passions are an agitation of the
mind and not a continual state” (VA-Friedländer 25:589). But even within
the Friedländer notes Kant says, “Some passions are transitory, others per-
sisting,” and then, for examples, mentions that “anger is transitory; hatred,
in contrast with it, persists” (VA-Friedländer 25:612).4 In later lectures (and
the published Anthropology), the distinction between the transitory
and non-transitory will be identified with the distinction between affects
and passions.5 As the distinction between affects and passions crystalizes,
Kant ascribes a different temporality to each: “With desires is not the per-
ception of the actual and present, but rather a presentiment of the future.
Feeling relates to the present. True affects belong to feeling, and passions to
desire” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115). But Kant comes to refine this view of
3 Another important difference relates to Kant’s accounts of the natural teleology of affects and
passions. In earlier lectures, both passions and affects are seen as provided for by Nature (see e.g.
VA-Friedländer 25:617), but in later lectures, Kant emphasizes the distinction between affects, which
are provided by Nature until reason can take over (see VA-Menschenkunde 25:1120, 1123–4; A 7:253)
and passions, which are products of social life that are in no cases and in no respect good, but are
an unnatural and bad effect of otherwise purposive elements of human nature (our inclinations, our
unsocial sociability, and our developing rational capacities).
4 Kant even connects this transitoriness of certain emotions with a decreased blameworthiness: “The
transitory passions, if they are evil, are sooner pardonable, than the [ones that] persist and have taken
root, for these commit bad actions in accordance with rules” (VA-Friedländer 25:612).
5 See VA-Menschenkunde 25:1122; VA-Mrongovius 25:1340; VA-Busolt 25:1520, 1526; A 7:252–3, 265–6.
each’s temporality. For affects in particular, Kant points out that they have
an intrinsically future orientation: “Affect can be [rooted in the] present;
but its prospect is the future” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1343). The difference
between affect and passion comes to be tied to the way in which each is
oriented towards the future, affect by means of a present sensation that
either acts or fades away, passion by means of a fixed interest in future
goals.
As these distinctions become sharper, Kant is able to sort different emo-
tional states more clearly into categories. Thus while the earlier lectures
see hatred, anger, being in love, avarice, and fear as just several different
affects/passions, later lectures come to distinguish sharply between emo-
tions that are properly affects – such as anger, fear, sadness, and pity (see e.g.
VA-Mrongovius 25:1343–4, 1347) – and those that are properly passions (see
VA-Mrongovius 25:1356–60). With respect to passions in particular, Kant
develops an elaborate taxonomy, within which the passions for vainglory,
domination, and greed (VA-Mrongovius 25:1356) play particularly promi-
nent roles, along with the sexual/amorous passion (see VA-Mrongovius
25:1359).
Kant’s lectures on anthropology begin with a general treatment of affects
and passions as an undistinguished set of emotions that compromise self-
governance by precluding the sort of reflection needed to compare par-
ticular feelings/inclination with the sum total of all feelings/inclination.
By the time of his published Anthropology, Kant maintains this general
account but has developed a clear psychological and philosophical distinc-
tion between affects – short-term and immediate feelings that overwhelm
one – and passions – long-lasting inclinations, consistent with some level of
reflection, that dominate one’s faculty of desire. In the rest of this chapter,
drawing from throughout Kant’s lectures where appropriate, I integrate
Kant’s more developed distinction between affects and passions with his
general empirical-psychological account of human action, in order to show
how affects and passions work, and why they are ascribed such different
moral importance.
2. Kant’s empirical psychology in brief

Before turning to the psychology of affects and passions, this section
offers some general overview of Kant’s empirical psychology.6 The central
6 Like Kant’s particular treatments of affects and passions, his empirical psychology underwent mod-
ifications over the course of the time when he was lecturing in anthropology, but this section offers
only a brief overview of Kant’s eventual empirical psychology.
conceptual framework for Kant’s empirical psychology is provided by his
distinction between three central human “faculties”: cognition, feeling, and
desire.7 Cognition is a faculty of apprehending objects, whether through
the senses, imagination, or reason. Feeling is a subjective faculty whereby
one experiences pleasure or pain. And desire is the faculty whereby repre-
sentations of ends bring about actions directed towards those ends. Given
this distinction between kinds of mental state (cognitive, affective, and
volitional), Kant explains human actions via interactions between them:
Pleasure precedes the faculty of desire, and the cognitive faculty precedes
pleasure . . . [W]e can desire or abhor nothing which is not based on pleasure
or displeasure . . . Thus pleasure or displeasure precedes desire or abhorrence.
But still I must first cognize what I desire, likewise what gives me pleasure
or displeasure; accordingly, both are based on the cognitive faculty. (VM-
Mrongovius 29:877–8)
Human action is caused by desire, which is caused by pleasure, which is
caused by cognition.8
Kant further distinguishes higher from lower faculties. Higher faculties
of cognition are the rational powers (judgment, the understanding, and
reason), while lower faculties are the senses and imagination. Higher feel-
ings are those caused by higher cognitive faculties, such as the feelings of
pleasure in maxims to which one is committed. Lower feelings are caused
by sensible or imagined awareness, such as the feeling of pleasure in tasting a
mango. Desires are higher or lower depending upon the state of the feelings
that cause them (i.e. higher feelings cause higher desires). And, for Kant,
one explains connections between cognitions and consequent feelings and
desires in terms of underlying grounds, such as instincts, inclinations, or –
for higher desires – “character.”
For the lower faculty of desire, the relevant “cognitions” are sensory, and
desires follow from those sensations by instinct or habitual inclination,
unmediated by reflection. In contrast, the higher faculty of desire always
involves cognition of a practical principle for action and a character that
takes up that principle. Even if the cognition of this principle is caused
by sensations (direct or imagined), the pleasure and consequent volition
are caused by the cognition of the principle rather than directly by those
sensations. Thus when one decides to “have a smoke,” while there may have
been an immediate craving that arose from the awareness of certain sensory
7 For more detail on Kant’s empirical psychology, see Frierson (2005); Frierson (2013); and Frierson
(2014).
8 See VA-Friedländer 25:577; VA-Busolt 25:1514; VM-Vigilantius 29:1012, 1024.
stimuli combined with an “inclination” to respond to those stimuli with
a desire, one’s decision to smoke is based not directly on this craving but
upon the taking up of this craving into a practical principle – a maxim –
for action: “I’ll have a quick smoke to satisfy my craving.” One who simply
finds herself smoking another cigarette without having ever “decided” to
do so is motivated by the lower faculty of desire (mere inclination).
One important implication of this distinction between the lower and
higher faculties of desire relates to the way that feelings prompt each
sort of desire. Lower desires are prompted by actually present sensations,
so a feeling that prompts direct action-from-inclination is responsive to
presently given situations. One takes out a cigarette purely from inclination
only in response to a present feeling of pain or discomfort (or a present
pleasure at the sight of someone else smoking). But higher desires are
responsive to maxims. One who acts on the maxim to have a quick smoke
can (at least in principle) cognize the principle without the immediate
presence of the craving, can plan for future smokes in the light of a
principle that covers the future as well as the present. Of course, such
a smoker will likely need a present pleasure in the fulfillment of the maxim
in order for that maxim to motivate, and, for this particular case, will
need to anticipate future pleasures in the satisfaction of future cravings.
But the present pleasure is caused by and directed towards a principle
that covers more than merely the present. One who smokes merely from
inclination will, if the present stimulus somehow passes, no longer have
any motivation for taking out any cigarettes. A person who smokes from
principle can continue to be motivated to act in the light of a principled
concern for possible cravings, even while not currently experiencing any
cravings.
3. The psychology of affects

Kant describes both affects and passions as “illness[es] of mind” (A 7:251)
or “emotional agitations” (Gemüthsbewegungen) (VA-Friedländer 25:589;
VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115) and classifies them in terms of the faculty of
soul that each affects, with affects being disorders of the faculty of feeling
while passions are disorders in the faculty of desire/volition (e.g. VA-
Friedländer 25:589). The disorder common to both is explained by Kant as
that through which we “come out of composure”; more specifically, “both
affect and passion shut out the sovereignty of reason” (A 7:251). Based
on these descriptions, affects and passions would both preclude rational
self-governance, and the difference between them would relate to whether
they do this by means of feeling or desire/inclination. In both cases, it is
important to distinguish affects and passions from “emotions” and from
ordinary feelings, desires, and inclinations. For Kant, even very strong
feelings and inclinations need not be affects or passions; they rise to the
level of these illnesses of mind only when they preclude reflection or “can
be conquered with difficulty or not at all by the subject’s reason” (A 7:251;
cf. e.g. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115–18).
But this apparently straightforward account of affects and passions is
not sufficient, for two main reasons. First, it leaves unsolved the question
why Kant would make such a sharp moral distinction between the two
illnesses of mind, calling one “properly evil” and the other a mere “lack
of virtue” (MS 6:408). But second, and of more immediate importance,
it is not clear precisely how affects and passions shut out the sovereignty
of reason. And in particular, it is unclear how any illness of mind that
is relevant to human actions – as both affects and passions are – could
avoid involving both feeling and desire/volition. Given Kant’s general
account of human action, it looks like affects will need to give rise to
desires if they are to cause action, and passions will need to involve feel-
ings (and, very likely, disordered ones) if they are to arise at all. But
Kant makes clear that while affects and passions “are equally vehement
in degree,” “as concerns their quality they are essentially different from
each other” (A 7:251; cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115). Thus more needs
to be said about what precisely is going on in the case of motivation by
affects and passions and how this is different from other cases of human
motivation. As we will see, getting clearer on how each motivates will
also help explain why there is an important moral difference between the
two.
We start, in this section, with affects. Kant emphasizes, “it is not the
intensity of a certain feeling that constitutes the affected state, but the lack
of reflection” (A 7:254). The “reflection” that affects preclude is “the rep-
resentation by means of reason as to whether he should give himself up
to [the feeling] or refuse it” (A 7:251), and in particular a failure to com-
pare “this feeling with the sum of all feelings (of pleasure or displeasure)”
(A 7:254; cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1118; VA-Mrongovius 25:1340). Affects
are “thoughtless” and involve a sudden “surprise through sensation” that
“suspend[s] the mind’s composure,” “mak[ing] reflection impossible” (A
7:252). They arise and dissipate quickly, before one even has time to reflect.
Kant compares affects to the “bursting of a dam,” a flash flood (VA-
Menschenkunde 25:1121–2), a “drunkenness that one sleeps off” (A 7:252), “a
fit of madness,” a “strong but temporary whirlwind” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1118) and even a “paroxysm” (A 7:253). Kant also seems to connect affects
particularly closely with bodily states, dividing them into those that “excite
the vital force” and those that “relax the vital force” (A 7:255, original
emphasis), describing fright as “dependent for the most part merely on
bodily causes” (A 7:256), emphasizing physiological features of affects like
anger and shame (e.g. at A 7:260), and even devoting a section to “Affects
by which Nature Promotes Health Mechanically” (A 7:261).9
Given their particular connection to feeling, affects might seem to have
no particular motivational import at all. And sometimes when Kant dis-
cusses affects, he focuses on them merely as feelings, without regard for
motivational efficacy. Thus Kant illustrates the absence of reflection with
a rich man who sees a goblet broken and “gives himself over completely to
this one feeling of pain (without quickly making that calculation [of the
importance of the goblet relative to other goods] in thought)” and thereby
“feels as if his entire happiness were lost” (A 7:254; cf. VA-Pillau 25:801;
VA-Busolt 25:1116). Similarly, “fright” seems to be an affect that merely
“disconcerts the mind” without implications for desire or action (A 7:255;
cf. VA-Friedländer 25:589). These problems are described purely at the level
of irrationally ordered feelings, without necessary reference to motivational
effects.
But, for Kant, affects are not generally motivationally vacuous. Within
Kant’s empirical psychology, feelings generally cause desires. And Kant
emphasizes that while “there are affects, that directly hit only at sensibility,
[there are] others that, besides the senses, also penetrate the soul [that is, the
faculty of desire]” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1125). Typically, those with affect
“act irrationally” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1340, emphasis added) and affect can
“double all [one’s] powers” and serve “as a spur to activity” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1343). Thus “Anger . . . quickly stirs up powers to resist ill” (A 7:255,
original emphasis), and “affects” can be “violent,” as when someone “is so
angry that she has turned the whole house upside down” (VA-Friedländer
25:620–1). The effectiveness of affects at generating activity even leads
Kant to say that “the human being manifests greater strength in [a state of]
affect . . . than if he is cool-headed” (VA-Friedländer 25:615) so that “some
people even wish that they could get angry, and Socrates was doubtful as to
whether it would not be good to get angry at times” (A 7:253). More crudely,
“the affect of fright [can] produce a scream” (VA-Friedländer 25:600), and
even affects that primarily paralyze rather than stimulate (such as shock
and certain cases of fear or anger; cf. VA-Friedländer 25:591–2) have direct
9 Borges (2008) emphasizes this physical–biological component of affects.

effects – even if only negative – on action. Given that Kant sees most
feelings as practical, he quite reasonably moves from discussions of the
disorder of feeling involved in affect to the ways in which this disorder
affects desires and thereby action.
The way affects can be disorders of feeling and relevant to action can
be understood by analogy with “temperaments of feeling,” which directly
influence feeling but give rise to characteristic actions, as when the san-
guine person “attributes a great importance to each thing for the moment,
and the next moment may not give it another thought” (A 7:287–8) and
as a result “makes promises in all honesty, but does not keep his word” (A
7:288). Because feelings are typically motivational, the character of one’s
faculty of feeling affects one’s actions. In the case of affects, sufficiently
strong feelings involve a “suspen[sion] of composure” (A 7:252; cf. VA-
Friedländer 25:589–90, 611), where to “keep one’s composure means . . . the
mind is subject to our power of choice” (VA-Friedländer 25:589). The way
affects preclude reflection is to compromise the influence of the power of
choice; that is, the higher faculty of desire. For affects with volitional impor-
tance (whether through provoking actions or paralyzing one’s capacity for
action), affects prompt “actions” through bypassing choice: “in affect, the
person cannot carry out a rational choice” (VA-Collins 25:212). In terms
of Kant’s psychology, one’s actions are motivated solely according to the
lower faculties of sensation, feeling, and desire.
As feelings so overwhelming that one that one cannot properly assess
their place in one’s overall happiness, affects become immediate causes
of action, bypassing consultation with higher faculties of cognition and
desire. Thus in Anthropology (and throughout his lectures), Kant empha-
sizes that affect relates to “the subject’s present state” (A 7:251; but cf.
VA-Menschenkunde 25:1125; VA-Mrongovius 25:1343). Consistent with this
emphasis on the lower faculties, Kant points out that affects move through
merely animal rather than distinctively human forms of volition.10 Affects
are tied to a “propensity to sink back into animality” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1125):
Instinct drives only savage people, as long as they are still half animal . . . This
affect springs out of a natural instinct and rules us for a while until we
are ruled by reason . . . Then the instinct must cease. (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1114)
10 Accordingly, in his Friedländer lectures, where the distinction was not yet as sharp as in later lectures,
Kant associates both affects and passions with animality (see VA-Friedländer 25:616–17). Later (e.g.
VA-Mrongovius 25:1360–1) Kant emphasizes that passions, unlike animal instincts, depend upon
socialization and culture and hence are distinctively human.
Nature [gave] the predisposition to [affects] to our animality . . . If the
human being has emerged from animality, he does not need the affects
anymore and must suppress them. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1342–3)
Affects are disorders of feeling that so displace humans’ abilities to reflect

and reason that we sink to the level of animals, either paralyzed with strong
feelings or motivated in merely animal ways, without choice or conscious
deliberation.
One important challenge to this account is what we might call the
“challenge from Kantian freedom.”11 Kant is widely taken to hold a view
of human agency according to which human beings are incapable of being
compelled by sensuous incentives unless those are freely endorsed. The
most common version of this point is framed in terms of the “incorporation
thesis,” which takes Kant’s claim that “freedom of the power of choice has
this characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to
action through any incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated
it into his maxim” (R 6:23–4, original emphasis) as a general principle of
human action. Maria Borges,12 for example, claims, “As strong as emotions
[which in the context particularly includes affects] can be, and as much
of a problem for morality as they can portray, the very idea of practical
reason presupposes that agents can decide how to act” (Borges (2004), 157).
Such a conception of human agency would preclude an account of affects
as altogether bypassing choice based on maxims (the motives of the higher
faculty of desire).
In fact, however, this challenge from Kantian freedom does not pose real
problems for Kant’s account of affects. Most of the passages in which Kant
seems to preclude actions caused independently of maxims or choice in
fact make a narrower point. The classic formulation of the incorporation
thesis, for example, is specifically described as an account of how the power
of choice is determined to action.13 But the power of choice is precisely a
11 There are other challenges as well. One, which I call the “challenge of rational affects,” arises from
the fact that some affects (notably but not exclusively enthusiasm) seem caused by ideas of reason
and hence grounded in higher faculties (cf. Sorenson (2002); Clewis (2009)). Another problem,
dealt with in part in the next section, is that my account here implies that affects have their ground
in inclinations, in apparent contrast to Kant’s explicit identification of inclination with passion. I
discuss both in more detail in Frierson (2014).
12 Borges is a particularly relevant example here because she is generally very resistant to overempha-
sizing the role of freedom in governing emotions, specifically targeting the view of emotions laid
out by Marcia Baron in Baron (1995).
13 Allison, consistent with the claims I make here and throughout this section, is careful to describe
the incorporation thesis as a thesis about “rational agency” (e.g. Allison (1990), 5, 40), not about
human actions altogether.
power of the higher faculty of volition. Insofar as affects bypass this faculty,
they also bypass any need to be incorporated into maxims. One might read
this passage as a general claim about all action, but the passage itself is
narrower in scope. Similarly, Borges’s key text in defense of her application
of the incorporation thesis to human action in general is taken from Kant’s
lectures on ethics:
Can I really conceive of a pathological compulsion in man as well? Truly I
cannot, for freedom consists in this, that he can be without compulsion in
the pathological sense; nor should he be compelled in that way. Even if a
man is so constrained, he can nevertheless act otherwise. (VMo-Mrongovius
29:617)
But this passage, too, has a narrower application. Kant makes this claim
in the context of an example of “fear of punishment” as a “compulsion
[that] is pathological” (VMo-Mrongovius 29:617), and Kant’s point is that
in ordinary cases, impulses do not literally “compel” one to act but merely
provide a strong but resistible incentive. That does not imply that there
cannot be cases in which human beings act directly on feelings of certain
sorts – affects – without the reflection required to be “capable of doing
otherwise” in any meaningful sense.
In this respect, Kant’s classic example of affect – anger – can be mis-
leading. Sometimes feelings of anger literally overpower one, bypassing
reflection, but at other times feelings of anger merely exert a particularly
strong influence on deliberation. Flinging something at someone in a rage
is quite unlike deciding to hurt someone because one is angry at them.
That affects apply to the former example rather than to the latter is par-
ticularly evident in the context of what Kant calls “wild affects,” where the
“affect . . . negates its own natural effect” (VA-Friedländer 25:591):
For example, one sees a child fall into the water, who one could save,
however, through a small aid, but one is so shocked that one thereby cannot
do anything. Shock anaesthetizes someone such that one is thereby unable
to do anything at all. Similarly, one can be completely shocked by joy over an
unexpected good fortune, and indeed also in this way, that one is completely
limp; whereas joy should surely, on the contrary, have good consequences,
but since the affect is wild, it itself negates its effect. It is just the same with
the affect of anger. Anger should, after all, have the effect of taking someone
to task and reproaching him, yet often the angry person is . . . is irritated,
quivers and trembles, and cannot say a word; that is an unrestrained affect.
(VA-Friedländer 25:591–2)14
14 See too A 7:260 f.; VA-Collins 25:211; VA-Parow 25:412; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1116.
In all three cases, the relevant affect is a strong feeling that prevents reflec-
tion, and in each case it is clear that the way in which it prevents reflection
is not by misleading deliberation but by forestalling it altogether. These
are, as Kant indicates, special cases. But they are special not in the way that
they forestall reflection but in the effects of that forestalling. The affect
of anger that provokes one to do immediate harm to its object precludes
reflection just as much as the paralyzing “unrestrained” or “wild” affect.
The difference is that the flinging anger accomplishes its natural effect,
while the quivering anger works against that effect.
Given this account of affect, it should be clear that Borges and other
interpreters are wrong to think that, for Kant, emotions are always capable
of being overridden by practical reason. But it should also be clear that
this sort of emotional lack of control is not a fundamental problem for
Kant’s overall account of human agency. We might say of affects what
Edward Hinchman has said of cases where one “is gripped by an arational
force”: “There is nothing philosophically perplexing . . . about compul-
sive action . . . The mental activity or behavior in question simply does
not qualify as choice, intention, or action” (Hinchman (2009), 407–8).
More precisely, human “actions” motivated by affects are not the actions
of humans qua rational agents. While they may still be “intentional” in
the sense that there can be a representation of an end that brings about
movement towards that end – as in the case of furious rage – they are not
“intentional” in the rational sense; that is, no end has been incorporated
into a maxim that provides a motive for the higher faculty of desire. Thus
there is no “choice” in these cases, in either the contemporary or the Kan-
tian sense. This solution, of course, leaves unsettled important issues about
the extent to which human beings can be held responsible for affect-driven
actions, but I reserve discussion of those issues for section 5.
4. The psychology of passions

Turning from affects to passions, Kant’s account might look superficially
similar. Like affects, passions are “illnesses of mind” that “shut out the
sovereignty of reason” (A 7:251), and just as affects prevent the comparison
of one feeling with others, a passion is an “[i]nclination that prevents reason
from comparing it with the sum of all inclinations in respect to a certain
choice” (A 7:265).15 But unlike affects, “the calm with which one gives
oneself up to [a passion] permits reflection and allows the mind to form
15 Cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1141; VA-Mrongovius 25:1339–40, 1353; VA-Busolt 25:1519.

principles” (MS 6:408, cf. A 7:266). Thus while passions “can be conquered
only with difficulty or not at all by the subject’s reason” (A 7:251), they
nonetheless seem to involve reflection to a considerably greater degree than
do affects.
To figure out to what extent passions can involve reflection, it is impor-
tant to clarify in what sense passions are “inclinations.” Kant uses the term
“inclination” in two crucially different senses throughout his empirical
psychology (and moral philosophy). On the one hand, an inclination in
the strict sense is a ground of the lower faculty of desire, whereby certain
sensations are connected with volition. In this context, “inclinations” are
distinct from instincts in being acquired, and distinct from character in
that they relate to the lower rather than higher faculties of feeling and
desire. But on the other hand, Kant often uses the term “inclination” to
refer indirectly to practical principles that determine one’s higher faculty
of desire to pursue ends set by inclinations in the strict sense. Here an
“inclination” can refer to any particular practical principle that has sen-
suously given ends, whether these are given by instinct or by inclination,
and it contrasts with pure practical principles (the moral law). One who
incorporates the end of an inclination in the strict sense into a maxim for
action has an “inclination” in this second, derived sense. In the context of
passions, one must discern which sort of inclination a passion is.
When Kant identifies passion as an inclination, he primarily has in
mind the second sense, which allows passions to involve commitments
to principles that make objects of inclinations their ends: “the calm with
which one gives oneself up to [a passion] permits reflection and allows the
mind to form principles” (MS 6:408). More specifically, “Passion always
presupposes a maxim on the part of the subject [and] is therefore always
connected with his reason” (A 7:266, see too A 7:410).
Kant’s descriptions of the passionate man even make him sound like a
paradigmatic case of true character, since he is consistent and even prin-
cipled in pursuing his passion. The “cold passions,” which Kant identifies
with “manias for honor, dominance, and possession” are not only “not con-
nected with the impetuosity of an affect” but are connected with “the
persistence of a maxim established for certain ends” (A 7:268, original
emphasis).
Kant must, then, be distinguishing between two different senses of
“reflection” and “principles” here, where passions preclude one sort but
allow another. Elsewhere, Kant makes clearer what he has in mind. As
in the case of affects, passions involve a lack of comparison: “Inclination
that prevents reason from comparing it with the sum of all inclinations
in respect to a certain choice is passion” (A 7:265). In particular, passion
makes a person “blind to . . . purposes which his [other] inclinations also
offer him[, which] he ignores completely” (A 7:266). But unlike affects,
“passions can be paired with the calmest reflection” and thus “are not
thoughtless; rather, they take root and can even coexist with rationalizing”
(A 7:265).
Iain Morrisson has helpfully characterized a distinction between maxims
of different sorts that can helpfully be applied to the case of passions:16 Some
“maxims actually justify actions twice over. They justify actions both in
terms of the immediate end contained in the maxim and in terms of the
end of happiness” (Morrisson (2005), 82). Other maxims, however, justify
actions only in one sense; that is, merely in terms of proposing good means
to achieve the end contained in the maxim (an end for which one has
an inclination). Passions would allow the second sort of maxim – one
justified in terms of the immediate end of inclination – but preclude the
first – one also justified in terms of overall happiness, or, more generally, a
consideration of all of one’s ends (pragmatic and moral).
Thus, to take one of Kant’s favorite examples of a passion – passionate
vengeance (see A 7:270) – the maxim “revenge is a dish best served cold”
(i.e. “retaliate for wrongdoing only after waiting”) might be well justified
in terms of the inclination (passion) for revenge, but might not be justified
in terms of one’s overall long-term happiness. One with a passion for
vengeance would be motivated by this principle, structuring decisions,
formulating subordinating maxims, and so on, all in accordance with the
desire for revenge. By contrast, one with a pure inclination, in the strict
sense, for revenge would not even formulate maxims but would simply
strike out in retaliation. While this might be possible, Kant would classify
it under the affect of anger rather than the passion of vengeance with its
lasting maxims. And for yet another contrast, for one with an inclination
to revenge incorporated through reflection into an overall principle of
self-love in the pursuit of happiness (with or without a moral proviso),
maxims of revenge would be considered not only in terms of the benefits
of satisfying the inclination for vengeance, but also in terms of its effects on
one’s long-term well-being. One might, in that context, end up endorsing
the maxim of patient and fierce retaliation, but one might just as easily –
or even more easily – endorse something like the Hobbesian maxim to “in
revenges . . . look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of
16 Morrisson does in fact apply this to the case of passions at the end of his article (see Morrisson
(2005), 85–7). I largely agree with Morrisson’s account, but I think that it conflates passions and
weakness of will with insufficient attention to the variety of ways human willing can go astray.
the good to follow. Whereby we are forbidden to inflict punishment with
any other design than for correction of the offender, or direction of others”
(Hobbes (1660), Chapter 15).
We can make two further refinements to this account of passions. First,
while Kant often focuses on the way in which passions preclude reflection
on other inclinations, passions that prevent reflecting on other inclinations
or on happiness as a whole also prevent reflection on requirements of duty
(cf. VMo-Collins 27:368; MS 6:408–9). Second, passions preclude reflection
not by bypassing higher faculties, nor merely by outweighing other relevant
concerns. The passionate person rationally deliberates, but only in terms
of his guiding passion, so nothing unconnected with that passion gets a
hearing. But this passion is one upon which the passionate person has
settled intentionally, and the maxims for the satisfaction of this passion
have become abiding principles of the person’s character. One with passion
has a principled commitment to pursue the ends of passion, without regard
to any other ends.
5. The moral status of affects and passions

The model developed in the previous sections lays out two ways human
beings act against their own best interests (whether those be moral or
prudential). Affects are disordered feelings that bypass the higher faculties
altogether, while passions are disorders of the higher faculty whereby it
focuses its practical principles around a particular end but does not reflect
on the value of that end relative to others. Thus an angry rage wherein one
lashes out would be an affect. A hateful vengeance whereby one organizes
life-principles around the desire to do harm to another, and does so without
considering the moral or prudential cost of these principles, would be
a passion. This model makes sense of many of the characteristics that
distinguish affects from passions, such as the tendency of affects to arise
and pass away quickly and of passions to persist and fester (e.g. A 7:252),
but among the most important advantages of this model is that it provides
a psychological background from which to understand Kant’s assessment
of the moral status of affects and passions. In particular, this model helps
make clear why Kant would insist, as he does in the Metaphysics of Morals,
that affects are merely a “lack of virtue” while passions are “properly evil”
(MS 6:408).
For explaining this moral assessment, it is important to clarify precisely
in what Kant considers moral evil to consist. When Kant turns to evil in
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, he explains,
The difference, whether a human being is good or evil, must not lie in the
difference between the incentives that he incorporates into his maxims (not
in the material of the maxims) but in their subordination (in the form of the
maxim): which of the two he makes the condition of the other. (R 6:36, original
emphasis)
The “incentives” of which Kant speaks here include the moral law and
various sensuous incentives, which latter are incorporated into particular
maxims by means of a general principle of self-love. Without going into
all of the details of his account,17 Kant’s general point is that to be morally
good is to be such that one’s maxims of choice are structured in such a way
that the moral law is prioritized over all other practical ends. Moreover,
the relevant subordination here must involve consistent prioritization of
the moral law: “The statement, ‘The human being is evil,’ cannot mean
anything else than that he is conscious of the moral law and yet has
incorporated into his maxim the (occasional) deviation from it” (R 6:32,
original emphasis). One can be evil while still subordinating some non-
moral ends to the moral law, unless one’s character always prioritizes the
moral law.
In this context, the evil of passions should be clear. A passion is a
deliberate orientation of the higher faculty of desire towards promoting
the end of a particular inclination. An agent influenced by a passion has
a determinate character constituted by consistent maxims in pursuit of
a particular good. Because these are maxims of the higher faculty, this
constitution of character is ascribable to a free intelligible character.18 And
these maxims are endorsed independently of any consideration of their
moral or prudential costs. But human evil is identical to the subordination
of the moral law to non-moral incentives, so one with a passion is evil.
Nonetheless, passions are a special case of human evil. Generally, evil is
understood in terms of the subordination of the moral law to principles
of self-love or one’s own happiness. In the present case, even self-love
is subordinated to a particular inclination. But the general characteristic
of human evil – the prioritization of non-moral to moral incentives – is
wholly operative. And since passions work through the higher faculty rather
than around it, one can be held fully responsible for one’s passions. One
characterized by maxims that prioritize the ends of a particular inclination
to all others – including moral ones – is properly evil.
17 For more, see Frierson (2003), 108–14; and Frierson (2013), 72–81.
18 For a defense of the connection between the empirically evident higher faculties and the ascription
of deeds to a free intelligible character, see Frierson (2008).
Prima facie, the moral status of affects is equally clear. As operations of
the lower faculty of desire, affects bypass humans’ power of choice. Thus
what one does under the influence of affect is not “action” in the strict
sense, and one cannot be held directly accountable for it. Even before Kant
had clearly distinguished affects from passions, when he still allowed for
both passions and affects to be “[s]ome . . . transitory, others persisting,” he
has already foreshadowed his insight that the “transitory passions, if they are
evil, are sooner pardonable, than the [ones that] persist and have taken root,
for these commit bad actions in accordance with rules” (VA-Friedländer
25:612). Over time, persistence would be more strongly linked with the
rule-governedness of the higher faculty of desire and made a central feature
of passions, and the transitory and merely animal-like motivational force of
the affects would become not only “less blameworthy” but wholly without
evil in the true sense. For that reason, affects are a mere “lack of virtue and,
as it were, something childish and weak, which can indeed coexist with the
best will” (MS 6:408, original emphasis). Because they bypass the higher
faculties altogether, we might say that affects are an absence of free agency
rather than a misuse of it. What one does under the influence of an affect
cannot be ascribed to one’s intelligible character and thus cannot strictly
be imputed. Put another way, there is no “practical perspective” on actions
from affect. One finds oneself to have done (or to be doing) something,
which one promptly regrets and rejects, but under the influence of affect,
one does not “act” in any sense that implicates a posture of freedom.
However, Kant’s account of the moral status of affects is more complex.
First, Kant insists that affects, like passions, must be resisted by a moral
apathy. In his Metaphysics of Morals, affects are introduced along with
passions as something that needs to be “subdue[ed]” in order to “be . . . one’s
own master in a given case” and thereby have the “inner freedom” required
for virtue (MS 6:407). And in corresponding lectures, Kant emphasizes,
“Anger, to be sure, is also contrary to the duty of apathy, whereby we
must not abandon ourselves to any affect” (VMo-Vigilantius 27:687). Kant
even says, “we blame ourselves, when we let ourselves come into affect”
(VA-Menschenkunde 25:1118; cf. VA-Busolt 25:1527). Relatedly, Kant often
treats affects as feelings over the origin of which one has a certain degree
of control. He describes one who “lets . . . lively sympathy . . . rise into an
affect” (MS 6:408–9, emphasis added), and his account of the man who
obsesses over the shattering of a “beautiful and rare crystal goblet” describes
him as one who “gives himself over completely to this one feeling of pain”
(A 7:254, emphasis added). Both cases involve a reference to something
like a free act, and thus some sort of responsibility for the emergence of
the affect. Combined with the obligation to develop an apathy that could
prevent and subdue affects, this seems to open room for considering affects
not merely a “lack of virtue” but a morally culpable lack of virtue, thus
something blameworthy.19
With respect to Kant’s seeming affirmation that one can be, to some
degree, morally responsible for affects, we need to distinguish between
moral responsibility for actions motivated by affects, and responsibility for
the affects themselves. Kant’s imagery of affects as like the “bursting of a
dam” (A 7:252) is apt. Occasionally, as when one’s child falls into the water
or one experiences a sudden and shocking harm or insult, affect comes over
one like a flood that overtops the dam in an instant: “All affects surprise us,
but some surprise us so suddenly that we cannot prepare ourselves for it in
the slightest” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1342). But often affects rise in a swell, and
it is only by “abandoning oneself” or “giving oneself over” that these rising
feelings become uncontrollable. Even when this abandonment is largely
passive, a matter of simply letting feelings slip out of control, it is still
something that we could have done something about: “We are blameworthy
when we let ourselves come into the throes of affect; but when we are already
in it, we are not capable of pulling ourselves out of it and then are not
blameworthy” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1342). Moreover, there are longer-term
strategies that one can employ to make oneself less susceptible to affects,
practicing strategies of calming and refusing to cultivate a heightening of
those emotions that are already most likely to lead to affect. Even if there
is no responsibility for what one does when one is overpowered by affect,
there are many ways that one can maintain and promote self-control before
that point. And since all affects undermine the capacity for self-governance,
one should constantly strive to eradicate them in one’s life. Insofar as one
19 A further complicating aspect of Kant’s account is even more troubling, since Kant sometimes
seems to suggest that affects, at least those considered “rational affects,” can be morally praiseworthy
(cf. Kant, ‘Essay on the Maladies of the Head’ 2:267, KU 5:272, SF 7:86; Sorenson (2002), 121;
Clewis (2009), 170). However (contra Sorenson), Kant does not endorse any rational affect as
morally required or even morally recommended. His apparent ambiguity is due to the fact that this
particular affect is a sign of a moral predisposition in human beings and can thus provide an antidote
to extreme pessimism about the possibility of morally good action. The presence of rational affects
(particularly enthusiasm) indicates humans’ moral predispositions and thereby enduring capacities
for virtue, but enthusiasm does not represent a genuine choice to act in accordance with moral ideas
and thus cannot be considered morally praiseworthy. While “enthusiasm . . . seems to be sublime,”
in fact “it cannot in any way merit a satisfaction of reason” (KU 5:272, emphases added; cf. MS
6:409); it is “fraught with danger” (SF 7:85) and “deserves censure” (SF 7:86). In fact, “to the extent
they turn into affect . . . the noblest agitations of the mind are the most harmful” (VA-Friedländer
25:591) since even if “an affect . . . is directed to something good, then [it is] not yet thereby excused,
for [it] then must also be constituted this way according to the form” (VA-Friedländer 25:591;
VA-Menschenkunde 25:1119).
fails in that striving towards virtue, one deserves censure and can be held
responsible for moral failing. When they become a “lack of virtue” with
which one is complacent, affects cross the line into moral evil.
6. Conclusion
Affects and passions inhibit moral action and even prudence. Affects inter-
fere with proper willing by bypassing the higher faculty of desire altogether,
as in cases such as shock and outbursts of rage. In that sense, they are intense
versions of relatively ordinary non-moral motivation, as when we do some-
thing by habit. They are “merely” a lack of virtue, but this is no small thing,
and it should be avoided (apathy). Passions inhibit by fixating attention
on a single inclination and blinding one to all other inclinations. They
are consistent with means–end reasoning, and even with reasoning about
subordinate ends, but, in the case of a passion, all reasoning takes place in
the context of one’s overriding passion. Thus passions are a sort of extreme
case of radical evil, where one’s fundamental maxim, rather than merely
subordinating morality to happiness, subordinates both morality and hap-
piness to the end of a particular inclination. They are properly evil and are
“fixed” in the same way that evil itself is.
c hap ter 7
The inclination toward freedom

Paul Guyer
Some features of Kant’s moral philosophy seem to have emerged fairly

early in his development: for example, the idea that genuine obligation
can derive only from “an end which is necessary in itself,” while “rec-
ommendations to adopt a suitable procedure, if one wishe[s] to attain a
given end,” where that end is not necessary in itself, cannot give rise to
genuine obligation, was already present in Kant’s 1764 Inquiry Concern-
ing the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (UD
2:298), and the terminology that recommendations of suitable procedures
to attain given ends that are not necessary in themselves are “conditional”
or “hypothetical” while commands to perform actions that are necessary
for ends that are necessary in themselves are “categorical” was in place by
the following year, as notes that Kant made in his copy of another work
from 1764, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, demon-
strate (Ri 115–16, 119–20). But what I argue to be the fundamental idea of
Kant’s mature moral philosophy, that the end that is necessary in itself is
nothing other than the freedom of rational beings to set their own ends,
thus of all rational beings that interact with each other to set their own
ends in harmony or consistently with each other – which is to say, since we
“know of only one species of rational beings on earth; namely, the human
species,” (A 7:329) the freedom of all human beings to set their own ends
but in harmony with each other – did not emerge until more than a decade
later. Then, this idea did emerge explicitly in Kant’s Lectures on Ethics in
the form in which he gave them between 1777 and 1784–5 and in the
sole surviving transcription of his lectures on natural right, the Naturrecht
Feyerabend of 1784–5, as well as, although in different terminology, in the
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. The question I wish to address in
this chapter is whether, and if so when, the development of Kant’s central
idea in moral philosophy became reflected in his lectures on anthropology;
where, in his discussion of the faculty of desire, Kant describes the natural
inclinations and predispositions of human beings that are relevant to their
114
The inclination toward freedom 115
achievement of morality and that can be cultivated for the sake of this
achievement.
What I will argue is that while Kant asserted the existence of a powerful
inclination to one’s own freedom as the condition of the possibility of one’s
own happiness early in the series of anthropology lectures that have survived,
it was only later that he introduced the idea that freedom is more than
this, but also something of intrinsic value suited to be an end in itself, and
only even later that he suggested that alongside each human’s inclination
for his own happiness there may also be an “enthusiasm” for freedom
in general. But although in the lectures on pedagogy published near the
end of his life, edited by his student Friedrich Theodor Rink, Kant did
suggest a little detail about how the native inclination of each for his own
freedom actually may be transformed into such enthusiasm for freedom
more generally, under the tutelage of children by their parents and teachers
as moral educators, Kant never developed an account of this transformation
within the lectures on anthropology. Perhaps this was because his course
on anthropology focused more on the hindrances to morality that we find
within human nature than on the assistance human nature might offer to
our rational nature, the latter, indeed, not being much emphasized even in
Kant’s main writings on moral philosophy.
In what follows, I will first say only a few words about freedom as
the end that is necessary in itself, and then illustrate at more length
the development of Kant’s thought about the inclination to freedom
and its cultivation and education in his anthropological and pedagogical
lectures.
1. Freedom as the inner worth of the world

I will treat Kant’s idea that freedom itself is the only end that is neces-
sary in itself briefly here, since I have treated it frequently and at more
length elsewhere.1 Kant introduces, without any apparent argument, the
idea that “freedom according to a choice that is not necessitated to act”
but is “restrained under certain rules of conditioned employment” is the
“inner worth of the world, the summum bonum,” and “the essential end of
mankind” in the lectures on ethics in the version recorded as early as the
summer semester of 1777 and as late as the winter semester 1784–5, shortly
1 See, among others, Guyer (1993), 43–89, reprinted in Guyer (2000), 129–71; Guyer (1995), 231–62;
English version in Guyer (2000), 96–125; Guyer (1996), 404–23; Guyer (1998), 22–35; Guyer (2007),
87–95; Guyer (2011), 194–214; and Guyer (2013).
116 Paul Guyer
following which the Groundwork was published.2 Kant also describes the
“highest principium of life” as the “greatest possible use of freedom,” the
only conditions under which “freedom can be consistent with itself ” or
“under which it can be self-consistent” (Kant (2004), 179–80; VMo-Collins,
27:346). The idea of freedom as the necessary end on which morality is
based is also present in the introduction to Kant’s lectures on natural right
as recorded by Gottfried Feyerabend (according to the title page of his
notebook, these lectures were given in the winter semester of 1784, but
according to the catalogue of the University of Königsberg they werer
given in the preceding summer semester3 – in either case, they were given
close to the time of Kant’s composition of the Groundwork). Here Kant
says, in terms with which we are familiar from the latter work, “The human
being is an end, hence it contradicts itself that he should be a mere means,”
but further, “The inner worth of the human being rests on his freedom,
that he has his own will. Because he is the ultimate end, his will must
depend on nothing else” (VNR-Feyerabend 27:1319). Kant stresses that it
is the freedom of human beings that makes them ends in themselves, not
their rationality: “If only rational beings can be ends in themselves, this is
not because they have reason, but because they have freedom. Reason is
merely a means . . . Reason does not give us dignity . . . But freedom, only
freedom alone, makes us ends in ourselves” (VNR-Feyerabend 27:1321–2).
Kant does not explain why freedom makes us ends in ourselves, but with
the help of the lectures on ethics we can at least figure out what he means
by saying that reason is the means to this end: reason is the faculty that
allows us to formulate consistent rules, so it is reason that allows us to
figure out how to make sure that freedom is consistently treated as an end
in itself when we have the possibility of multiple exercises of freedom and
multiple free agents before us – as we always do.
This point understood, we can see the outlines of Kant’s idea that the
inner worth of the world and the inner worth of mankind are the same,
namely freedom, and that we need to use reason to figure out the rules –
the moral rules – that will allow us to realize the greatest possible use
of freedom. That Kant is developing the same idea in the Groundwork
may not be obvious because, in its first two sections, where Kant is laying
2 See the transcription by Johann Friedrich Kaehler dated summer semester, 1777, edited by Werner
Stark as Kant (2004), 177–8, and VMo-Collins 27:344–5. Collins’s notes were probably copied from
an earlier transcription going back to or having a common source with the Kaehler transcription,
since his notes are virtually identical to Kaehler’s, but considerably different from the overlapping
portion of “Morality According to Professor Kant” transcribed by Carl Coelestin Mrongovius also
in the winter semester 1784–5 (see VMo-Mrongovius 29:597–629).
3 See Gerhard Lehmann’s introduction to Akademie edition, Volume 27, part 2.2 (27:1053).
out the content of the moral law on the basis first of his analysis of the
common-sense concepts of good will and duty and then on the basis of
his analysis of the philosophical concept of a categorical imperative, he
does not explicitly discuss freedom, and then, in the third section, when
he introduces it, he uses the fact of our freedom as the middle step in his
proof that the moral law thus analyzed really does apply to us and is not a
mere “phantom,” but he does not further analyze the content of the moral
law. Instead, in Section ii, Kant states that the idea of humanity – that
is, rational being in the only form in which we are acquainted with it –
is the “ground of a possible categorical imperative”; it is that which can
serve as the only objective and necessary end, “something the existence of
which in itself has an absolute worth” that can only be fully realized if we
act in accordance with the categorical imperative as thus far defined, the
requirement to act only on maxims that can also serve as universal laws,
and that makes it rational for a rational being to bind itself by that rule (G
4:428, original emphasis).
However, what Kant means by rational being or its manifestation in
human form is the same as what he means by freedom, or the freedom to
set ends, and there is no difference between the doctrine of the Groundwork
and the doctrine of Kant’s lectures on ethics and natural right. For later in
Section ii of the Groundwork, in summing up his several formulations of the
categorical imperative, Kant says, “Rational nature is distinguished from
the rest of nature” simply “by this, that it sets itself an end” (G 4:437), and a
dozen years later, in the “Doctrine of Virtue” of the Metaphysics of Morals, a
work in which he is explicitly and exclusively discussing the manifestation
of rational being in human form and the duties that this entails specifically
for human beings, Kant says that humanity is that by which a human
being alone “is capable of setting himself ends” (MS 6:387), and, “The
capacity to set oneself an end – any end whatsoever – is what characterizes
humanity (as distinguished from animality)” (MS 6:392). And if humanity
is simply the capacity to set our own ends freely, then treating humanity
as the necessary end – that is, always making humanity an end and never
merely a means – is the same as making freedom itself our ultimate end, or
the greatest possible use of freedom our essential end.4 Though he expresses
4 There has been extensive discussion of what Kant means by the idea of humanity as an end in itself,
triggered by Richard Dean (2006). Dean argued that in order to make any ends whatsoever morally
permissible or even mandatory, it cannot be the capacity to set ends as such that is humanity, the
necessary end and the ground of any possible categorical morality, but the good will, or setting only
morally acceptable or mandatory ends. The way in which I have put his claim should make clear
that I think it circular and question-begging, as I do Henry Allison’s response to Dean that it can
118 Paul Guyer
it in different words in his lectures and in his published works, this idea is
thus the core of Kant’s mature moral philosophy.
Thus by the middle of the 1780s Kant had reached the view that the
freedom to set our own ends – not each of us on his or her own, rather
each of us in interaction with all the rest of humankind – is the necessary
end that is the ground of a possible categorical imperative and the basis of
morality. Our task now is to see whether, and if so how, this idea makes
itself known in his lectures on anthropology.
2. The inclination to freedom

Kant’s anthropology lectures clearly recognize that we each have a powerful
inclination on behalf of our own freedom; the question is whether this is
simply an inclination that must be suppressed for us to become moral, or
whether it can be transformed into a favorable attitude toward the freedom
of all. Our conclusion can only be that while there may be hints of the
latter idea in Kant’s lectures, it is hardly fully developed.
Kant’s anthropology lectures, like the handbook he published for them
in 1798, after he had stopped giving them, begin with a discussion of
the empirical factors affecting our capacities for cognition, feeling, and
desire. His central concern in his discussion of the faculty of desire is
our inclinations and the effects they may have, for better or worse, on our
efforts to be moral. What I am particularly interested in is Kant’s treatment
of our inclination to be free and its relation to morality. And what I will
argue is that for at least the first decade of his lecturing on anthropology
Kant recognized only an inclination to our own, individual freedom as a
condition of our own, individual happiness; that at around the time of
the Naturrecht Feyerabend and the Groundwork he introduced the idea of
freedom, not our own freedom but freedom as such, as the fundamental
moral value; but that while this is to some extent reflected in the lectures
on anthropology from this period, Kant did not really offer an account
of how the natural inclination to our own freedom can be transformed
into a morally helpful enthusiasm toward the freedom of all. He may have
pointed in that direction in the lectures on pedagogy, but they remain
beyond the purview of this chapter.
only be the capacity for a good will that can be humanity (see Allison (2011), 218–29). My own view
is that the potential problem of valorizing morally impermissible ends is solved by the fact that it
is not just my freedom or yours that is the end in itself but all instances of freedom. That this is the
necessary end brings the necessary constraint along with it, namely the constraint of consistency, or
the “greatest possible use of freedom” that Kant introduced in the lectures.
In the lectures on anthropology, Kant always presents the inclination
to freedom as one of two “general” or “formal inclinations” that we have,
alongside the inclination to resources or means (Vermögen). These inclina-
tions are general or formal in the sense that they are not inclinations for
objects – that is, immediate sources of gratification, such as inclinations for
wine, women, or song might be considered to be. In the Friedländer Lec-
tures of 1775–6, Kant introduces the two general inclinations and describes
the inclination to freedom thus:
We can think of two objects of inclination which are completely general,
where the inclinations have no object, but aim for means to satisfy the incli-
nations. These are freedom and resources. Freedom is a negative resource.
If I am free, then I obtain nothing thereby. One can always be free, and still
be needy. However, freedom is a negative condition of all satisfaction of our
inclination. Whoever is not free cannot live how he wants, but if he is free,
then he can live according to his own sense, if, namely, the other resources
are presupposed. Freedom is therefore highly valued since it is the sole con-
dition for being able to satisfy his inclinations . . . Freedom is therefore a
general object for satisfying the entirety of inclination. This is therefore
the first good that humans wish for themselves, and yet they cannot avail
themselves of it, but it must be restricted. (VA-Friedländer 25:581–2)5
Similar statements can already be found in the transcriptions from Kant’s
first version of the anthropology course in 1772–3. Thus in the Collins
transcription, we find this statement:
The general condition of all inclinations is freedom and resources. I cannot
hope that my condition will be in accord with my inclination if I am
not free, the inclination to freedom is the highest [strongest], because it is
the condition of all inclinations. The most terrifying condition for a human
being is when another always determines his condition, and takes care of the
happiness of the former in accordance with his own inclination. (VA-Collins
25:214)6
And in the Parow transcription from the same course, we find:
We can consider all inclinations from 2 points of view.
(1) In so far as they are the general condition of all inclinations, and one
can call this the inclination in abstracto.
5 I have benefited from but slightly revised the translation of the Friedländer transcripts by G. Felicitas
Munzel. I will note my departures from the translations in this volume only when I consider them
significant.
6 Georg Ludwig Collins (1763–1814) was matriculated at the university in Königsberg only in 1784–5,
and dated his copy of the anthropology lectures, made in his own hand, in 1786; his transcription
is assigned to the course from 1772–3 because of its similarity to other transcriptions of that course,
and must have been copied from one of those or from a common source.
120 Paul Guyer
(2) In so far as the objects of the inclinations are divided.
The general condition of all inclinations is freedom and resources. Freedom
signifies precisely the condition in which one can live in accord with one’s
inclinations, hence humans also have a remarkable inclination to freedom,
merely because it is the sole condition under which we can satisfy our
inclinations . . .
Yet freedom is only a negative condition under which the human
being can satisfy his inclinations. To freedom there must also be added
resources . . . Resources [are] the power by means of which one can realize
what is in accord with our choice [Willkühr]. (VA-Parow 25:417–18)
These passages are straightforward, but several comments on them are in
order. First, of course, when Kant says that the inclination to freedom is
the condition of all inclinations, obviously he means that it is the condi-
tion of all other, particular, and we might say, in contrast to “abstract,”
concrete inclinations, inclinations for particular objects or kinds of object,
such as, again, wine, women, and song; otherwise his position would be
circular. In one way, this applies to the inclination for resources, too: for
the normal person, at least, resources – which include not only money
but also reputation, honor, health, natural powers, talents, and facility (see
VA-Collins 25:214, VA-Parow 25:418, and VA-Friedländer, 25:582–3); that
is, whatever allows one to get what one wants, either by one’s own efforts
(health, natural power, talents, and facility) or by getting others to provide
what one wants (money and reputation) – are not the immediate objects of
inclination, but desired only as means to possible ends; only in aberrational
cases, such as the case of the miser or one obsessed with his own reputation,
do these goods become immediate objects of inclination, ends rather than
mere means.7 Kant does not explicitly say that freedom may be a condition
of obtaining resources, but sometimes of course it may be: some people
are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and may not need freedom
to acquire resources, but others may need freedom to acquire resources,
and of course even those born to wealth may need freedom, say from a
spendthrift trust, to expend their resources as they please, so freedom may
be the condition of the use, if not of the acquisition, of resources, and thus
the general condition of resources as well as of the pursuit of the satisfaction
of particular inclinations; and perhaps this is what Kant means to signal
when he says that freedom is the “highest” (allerhöchste) or “strongest”
(allerstärkste) inclination (see VA-Collins 25:214n1).
7 The frugal Kant was fascinated with the case of the miser, perhaps worried about drawing a border
between his own reasonable frugality and irrational miserliness, and discussed it often; for one
prominent discussion, see VMo-Collins 27:399–407.
Second, or further, Kant sometimes describes the general inclinations as
inclinations for the conditions that make happiness possible. In the Collins
transcription, he says this about the inclination for resources: “people often
value the resources to make themselves happy” (VA-Collins 25:214). But
in the Mrongovius transcription, from 1784–5, he explicitly describes the
inclination to freedom as an inclination toward the general condition of
happiness:
There are 2 formal inclinations, the inclination to freedom and to resources –
(freedom is the negative condition – the human being can only satisfy his
inclinations if nothing hinders him and then he has freedom). The former
is the inclination to determine oneself according to one’s own inclinations
and to be free from the inclinations of others. It is therefore really a negative
condition, by means of which the satisfaction of my inclinations is not
promoted but hindrances thereto are merely swept out of the way. I do
not thereby acquire anything but only make myself independent of the
inclinations of others . . . Freedom is the first thing human beings demand,
the human being does not satisfy complete freedom to the highest good.
I can only hope to be happy and satisfied in accordance with my own
concepts, but then I must have freedom. Freedom is thus the basis of the
hope for happiness. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1354)
But this way of expressing the generality or formality of freedom (or
resources) as an object of inclination represents no change in Kant’s view
that freedom (or resources) is the condition for the satisfaction of other,
more particular inclinations, for the simple reason that for Kant happiness
is never anything other than the comprehensive satisfaction of particular
inclinations, and the inclination or desire for happiness is not an inclination
or desire alongside our other particular desires, but just the supervenient
desire to satisfy our various desires, whatever they may be, or at least as
many of them as can be conjointly satisfied. Kant expresses this point in
the Friedländer transcription when he states, “Love of life and of happiness
is no special inclination, but the general condition of the satisfaction of all
inclinations” (VA-Friedländer 25:584), and of course he frequently makes
this point in his main published works on moral philosophy as well.8 Free-
dom may be the general condition for the achievement of happiness, but
insofar as happiness is nothing but the collective satisfaction of particular
8 For example, “all the elements that belong to the concept of happiness are without exception
empirical – that is, they must be borrowed from experience” (G 4:418); and happiness “is still only
the general name for subjective determining grounds, and it determines nothing specific about
[them] . . . That is to say, in what each has to put his happiness comes down to the particular feeling
of pleasure and displeasure in each and, even within one and the same subject, to needs that differ
as this feeling changes” (KpV 5:25).
122 Paul Guyer
inclinations, freedom remains the general condition for the satisfaction
of such inclinations, and the inclination to freedom is more general and
“higher” than those particular inclinations.
Next, note that in these passages the kind of freedom that Kant stresses
is freedom from interference in the pursuit of one’s particular ends from
other people. This was evident in the passage from Collins, where Kant said
that nothing is more terrible for a person than that another (ein anderer),
that is, another person, impose his own inclination on the former, and
in a further statement, which I did not previously quote: “People always
take great pleasure in conquering [besiegen] others” (VA Collins 25:214).
In a sentence I elided from my previous quote from Parow, Kant says,
“It is therefore quite ridiculous when a landowner treats his subjects in
his own way, and forces them to live according to his own conception of
happiness” (VA-Parow 25:417). And in a sentence I also omitted from my
previous quotation from Friedländer, Kant says that freedom is denied if
“someone takes the responsibility for another’s happiness upon himself, but
in such a way that he” – that is, the latter – “entirely loses his freedom, and
it” – that is, the latter’s happiness, “is to depend merely on his” – that is,
the former’s, “will” (VA-Friedländer 25:581). The last two passages make the
same point that Kant would make years later in the Metaphysics of Morals,
namely that it is right and indeed obligatory to promote the happiness of
others, but only under their own conception of their happiness – that is,
that which they freely form for themselves (MS 6:388) – while by contrast
it is wrong even to promote their happiness only in accordance with one’s
own conception thereof. The first quotation might be taken to suggest
instead that it is wrong to impose or dominate others for the satisfaction
of one’s own inclination, or one’s own happiness. If so, all three statements
together state that it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of others
whether that is just for the sake of one’s own happiness – that is, for the
gratification of some immediate inclination or inclinations of one’s own –
or even to promote their happiness, but only on one’s own conception of
their happiness – which would, after all, ultimately be nothing more than
a product of one’s own inclination also.
That Kant is conceiving of the relevant hindrance to freedom in these
passages only as one person’s interference with another, specifically the
imposition of one person’s inclinations upon another, might be surpris-
ing, for in earlier material related to his anthropology, namely his notes
in his own copy of the 1764 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful
and Sublime, itself arguably his first anthropological publication, he had
also stressed that it is important that we not be dominated by our own
inclinations. In these notes, to be sure, Kant also stressed our intense
disinclination for domination by others, thus by implication our intense
inclination toward freedom from such domination by others, and indeed
also in phrases that echo throughout the subsequent Anthropology Lectures
and even in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, published more
than thirty years after these notes were made. Thus Kant writes,
Nothing can be more appalling than that the action of one human stand
under the will of another. Hence no abhorrence can be more natural than
that which a person has against servitude. On this account a child cries and
becomes bitter if it has to do what another wants without one having first
made an effort to make that pleasing to him. (Ri 68)
And further,
No misfortune can be more terrifying to one who is accustomed to freedom,

who has enjoyed the good of freedom, than to see himself delivered to [crossed
out: under] a creature of his own kind who can compel him to do what he
will (to give himself over to his will [Willens]). (Ri 70–1)
Such passages make the same point that Kant is making in the anthropology
lectures. But there are also passages in these notes that suggest that freedom
lies in freedom from domination by one’s own inclinations, or at least in the
control of some of one’s inclinations so that one can better gratify others,
for example the restriction of one’s inclinations to those that are readily
satisfied with minimal means, since, after all, as we have seen, the role of
freedom, at least so far, is to be the condition of happiness, and without
some inclinations to satisfy, there is of course no possibility of happiness,
since happiness is constituted by the satisfaction of (some coherent set of )
inclinations. Thus Kant writes in one note, “A person’s contentment arises
either from satisfying many inclinations with many agreeable things, or
from not letting many inclinations sprout, and thus by being satisfied with
fewer fulfilled needs.” The latter is of course the easier path to contentment
or happiness, since the fewer things one needs to satisfy one’s inclinations,
the more likely one is to be able to satisfy them. Indeed, Kant even goes so
far as to say,
Virtue does not at all consist in overcoming acquired inclinations in partic-

ular cases, but in seeking to be free of such inclinations and thus learning
to do without them gladly. It does not consist in conflict with the natural
inclinations, but rather in making it the case that one has none except for
the natural ones, because these can always be satisfied. (Ri 60)
124 Paul Guyer
The assumption in all of this is that happiness lies in being able to satisfy a
set of inclinations that one can reasonably expect to satisfy; obviously, this
cannot require the elimination or suppression of inclination altogether, but
it does require both that one be able to be free from interference by others
in attempting to satisfy what would otherwise be reasonable inclinations
and also that one be free from domination by one’s own “unnatural”
or unreasonable inclinations – that is, ones that cannot reasonably be
expected to be readily satisfied – so that one can satisfy one’s reasonable
and “natural” inclinations – that is, those one can reasonably expect to be
able to satisfy readily. (Reasonable inclinations are “natural” for Kant since,
from his always teleological point of view, nature herself would only give
us inclinations that it would also give us the means to satisfy. One way of
describing the change from the “pre-critical” to the “critical” Kant would
be to say that his pervasive teleology is transformed from a constitutive to
a regulative principle (see Guyer (2009), 57–97).)
I have said that Kant has introduced the inclination for freedom as
the highest general condition for happiness, and that seems like a non-
moral conception of this inclination. The remark from the notes on the
Observations, written almost a decade before the anthropology lectures
commenced, that freedom from domination by acquired and unnatural
inclinations is a condition for virtue, might suggest that this inclination is
specifically moral, but since the virtue that Kant has described concerns
the ready satisfaction of inclinations – that is, happiness – and at least
by Kant’s later lights virtue is of course not immediately concerned with
happiness, but only with the worthiness to be happy, the concept of virtue
that he has introduced here seems to be, again by his later lights, non-
moral or pre-moral. Freedom has been presented only as a condition for
the possibility of happiness, not as a condition for worthiness of happiness.
I will return to this issue shortly, but first I want to make my next point
about these anthropological passages we have been considering, namely that
the freedom that Kant is talking about here is strictly freedom of choice,
which can be understood, as far as anything in these materials goes, in a
naturalistic way, compatibly with the determinism that we can presume
that Kant always assumed to prevail in the natural world. Although he
has used the term Wille in some of these descriptions of what one wants
to be free from – one wants to be free from hindrance by the Wille of
others in one’s pursuit of happiness after one’s own conception of it –
this term does not yet carry any metaphysical weight for Kant; it is not
yet equivalent to pure practical reason or to “transcendental,” libertarian
freedom, the freedom to originate a chain of effects without any antecedent
cause or to choose either of two alternatives before one no matter what
one’s past history might seem to predict one will choose. Even if he might
later reject this as the “freedom of a turnspit” (KpV 5:97), here Kant is
only talking about freedom as he already understood it in 1755, as the
issuance of an action from a person’s own “inner principle”; that is, from
her own representation of “what is best” rather than from someone else’s
(see PND 1:401–2). Freedom from domination by one’s own but unnatural
or acquired inclinations may also be understood as action determined by an
inner rather than external principle, namely one’s own natural inclinations
combined with one’s natural reason, one’s natural ability to reflect on
which of one’s inclinations may be readily satisfied and which not. Again,
there is no hint of a libertarian conception of freedom of the will or any
of Kant’s later metaphysics here. Kant signals all of this, I believe, by his
use of the term Willkühr in the passages we have been discussing, for
example the passage from Parow (VA-Parow 25:418). Willkühr is just the
ordinary term for choice, selection, what is voluntary, and so on, with no
metaphysical freight. Thus the freedom for which we have such a strong
inclination is, at least from the point of view of Kant’s anthropology,
nothing other than the freedom to pursue our own inclinations and thus
our own conception of happiness free from hindrance by other people or
even from our own but unnatural inclinations; this does not imply that our
natural inclinations or considered preferences are not themselves causally
determined – presumably they are called natural at least in part just because
they are.9
Another point that Kant makes in our original passage from Friedländer
is that the freedom that we so desire must be restricted (eingeschränkt)
(VA-Friedländer 25:582). What he means by this becomes clear in the
Mrongovius transcription, where he states that there are two kinds of free-
dom; by this he means not that there is mere preference that can be causally
determined and some deeper, metaphysical freedom, but rather that there
is “civil freedom” “under laws” and “barbaric freedom” “without laws”
9 Thus I disagree with Holly Wilson’s suggestion that the anthropology lectures invoke the distinction
between Wille and Willkühr that Kant introduced in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (see
Wilson (2006), 64–5). Robert Louden stresses the importance of freedom in Kant’s anthropology
(e.g. Louden (2000), 67), but does not raise the question whether this should be understood
naturalistically or transcendentally. In his detailed study of the anthropology lectures, Thomas Sturm
seems ultimately to conclude, as I have, that Kant’s conception of action and thus of freedom in the
lectures is intended to remain empirical, or, as I have called it, naturalistic, and not to invoke Kant’s
transcendental idealist theory of freedom (see Sturm (2009), e.g. 452). G. Felicitas Munzel (2012)
argues that the Doctrine of Method of the first Critique already implies a theory of the education
of “inner freedom,” and does not doubt that Kant’s lectures on anthropology and pedagogy employ
the same conception of freedom (see her Chapter 4).
126 Paul Guyer
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1354) – that is, freedom with laws that by restricting the
freedom of each to some degree turn out to maximize the freedom of each,
and freedom without laws, which might seem to maximize the freedom of
each but ends up minimizing or destroying the freedom of many, if not all.
This distinction is, of course, the basis of Kant’s philosophy of right, the
most general principle of which is precisely, “Right is . . . the sum of the
conditions under which the choice [Willkühr] of one can be united with
the choice of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom” (MS
6:230). But I do not intend to discuss the foundations of Kant’s political
philosophy here; rather the final point that I want to make about the pas-
sages we have thus far been considering is that the freedom to which we
have such a strong inclination is freedom negatively conceived, freedom
from hindrance by anything else, other people or unnatural inclinations,
that would get in the way of our successfully pursuing a reasonable set of
preferences for ourselves. Kant makes this point in one sense in his con-
trast between the inclination to freedom and the inclination for resources:
freedom from interference, although it can be called “the first good which
human beings wish for themselves” (VA-Friedländer 25:582), is a “negative
condition” in contrast to the resources such as health and wealth which
are “a positive basis for procuring the actuality of the object” of any par-
ticular, immediate inclination. “Or freedom is only a negative condition,”
to which resources “must be added” (VA-Parow 25:417). The absence of
hindrances to the pursuit of one’s own ends may be a necessary, but it is
certainly not a sufficient, condition for the realization of those ends; to that
necessary condition must be added at least resources as adequate means to
their realization, as well as, no doubt, some luck. But there is another sense
in which freedom from hindrance is only a negative condition, namely
that even though it is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for
the satisfaction of inclinations that will constitute one’s happiness, it is the
object of one’s inclination, even one’s strongest inclination, only because it
is a necessary condition for the satisfaction of other inclinations and thus
for one’s happiness; it has no independent value, no intrinsic value; it is
not a value in its own right. It may be the greatest of all means, but not an
end in itself, let alone the sole end in itself.
That freedom, in some sense, is an end in itself, or indeed the end
in itself, and for that reason the essential end of mankind is, I claim,
the central idea of Kant’s mature moral philosophy. So the anthropology
lectures from the 1770s (and even the Mrongovius transcription, though
dated 1784–5) do not yet reflect Kant’s mature moral philosophy, or suggest
how our native inclination to freedom might be enlisted in the cause of
morality as the mature Kant conceives it. We will now see that one version
of the anthropology that does clearly date to the first part of the 1780s does
recognize that freedom is not only a (negative) necessary condition for the
satisfaction of inclination and realization of happiness, but also an end in
its own right, although it does not yet suggest that our natural inclination
for freedom in the first role can be transformed into a motive to realize
freedom in the second. This text is Menschenkunde.
3. Value added
The text first published by Johann Adam Bergk, using the pseudonym
“Fr. Ch. Starck,” under the title Immanuel Kant’s Menschenkunde oder
philosophische Anthropologie, was based on material that has been assigned
different dates, most recently, by Reinhard Brandt, to 1781–2, on the ground
that the text uses phrases that Kant used for the first time only in the
Critique of Pure Reason.10 Of course, such phrases could have crept into
an earlier text during Bergk’s editing, which took place many years later. It
seems safest just to say that the material probably originated during Kant’s
critical period but before the final phase of his work in the 1790s. In any
case, what is crucial for our purposes is that the text does add a new strand
to Kant’s thought about the psychology of freedom.
In the discussion of inclination, which comes at its usual place in the
course of lectures,11 Kant first makes his usual distinction between the “for-
mal inclinations” to freedom and resources, and gives his usual definition
of freedom in negative terms, namely, “Freedom signifies liberation from
hindrances to living according to our own inclination” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1142). He adds that hindrances to our freedom come not from nature
but from other people, thus “our inclination to freedom is directed only
to human beings” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1143). His premise here, which
goes back to his notes in the Observations (Ri 71), is that nature, in the
sense of the physical environment, merely sets the conditions within which
we can exercise our freedom, but only other human beings can willfully
interfere with our ability to exercise our freedom within the limits of those
conditions. Perhaps the ultimate source for Kant’s position here is indeed
anthropological; that is, based in empirical psychology, namely in what
Peter Strawson dubbed our “reactive attitudes”: as a matter of psychologi-
cal fact, we do not resent the environmental conditions in which we find
10 See Robert Louden’s introduction to the translation of selections from Menschenkunde in Lectures
on Anthropology (Louden (2007a)).
11 But which is not translated in the editors’ selection for Lectures on Anthropology.
128 Paul Guyer
ourselves, but we do resent the interference of other human beings with
our own attempts to do as best we can within these environmental condi-
tions. Be that as it may, Kant continues with his usual observations: “The
inclination to freedom is the greatest among all our inclinations”; “The
human being feels unhappy even under the kindest master if he is to be
happy in accordance with the inclination of his master. For everyone wants
to be happy in accordance with his own inclination” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1143) – that is, his own conception of happiness, which is, of course,
nothing but the sum of his (coherent) inclinations.
But then Kant adds a thought that we have not previously encountered
in the anthropology lectures, namely, “Freedom is also a condition of the
worth [Werth] of a human being, so that if one takes freedom from him,
one takes from him the characteristic condition of his eminence [Vorzugs].”
Now, Vorzug could also be translated as “superiority,” and Kant could just
be making a further psychological point here, namely that if you deprive
a person of his freedom you also deprive him of any feeling of superiority
over others that he might have, you make him feel like a slave rather than
a master. But Kant continues with characteristically moral rather than
psychological language, so I do not think this is what he means. Rather,
what he says next is,
Yet one sees that the ultimate end of the human being points to this, that he
rule himself [sich selbst regiere], so that the human being loses all worth as
soon as he stands under the dominance of another in such a way that it is no
longer allowed to him to be happy in accordance with his own inclination.
This judgment is confirmed [bestätigt] by experience. (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1143)
This construction is exactly the same as the one Kant uses in the cen-
tral “fact of reason” passage in the Critique of Practical Reason, where he
argues that the “order of concepts” when we infer from the universality
and necessity of the moral law to the purity of our reason and will is
“confirmed by experience” (die Erfahrung bestätigt), namely our experi-
ence of believing that we could refrain from bearing false testimony just
because we know that we ought to do so (KpV 5:30). Thus Kant is intro-
ducing the central thesis of his morality of pure practical reason into his
anthropology here, claiming that the value of freedom that is (somehow)
grounded in pure reason alone is also made manifest to us in our empirical
psychology.
Now, of course, the freedom that is so valued by morality is not just
one’s own freedom, but the freedom of all; in his crucial comment on the
formula of humanity in the Groundwork (which is, as I argued in section 1
above, the way in which Kant presents his idea of the fundamental value of
freedom in that work), Kant says that each must value his own humanity
(ability to set ends, thus freedom) “objectively” rather than merely “sub-
jectively,” “on just the same rational ground” that holds for all. That is, in
order to be moral each must value his own freedom not just as his own, but
as an instance of freedom that is equally valuable in every being in which it
occurs – and thus each must value the freedom of others equally with his
own. But the inclination to freedom that Kant has thus far discussed in his
anthropology lectures seems to be only an inclination to one’s own freedom,
accompanied at best by the prudential realization that one may actually
be able to attain more freedom for oneself by accepting some restriction
in favor of the freedom of others (“civil freedom”) than by allowing no
restriction of one’s own freedom (“barbaric freedom”). And indeed, as in
the Mrongovius transcription, in Menschenkunde Kant follows the passage
we have been considering with another statement of that distinction. But
then he goes further. He states that “the inclination to freedom ennobles the
human being” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1145), which he has not said in any
of the other reports of his lectures, and it would not seem that an inclina-
tion only for one’s own freedom, merely as a condition of happiness rather
than as the “ultimate end” of mankind, would be especially ennobling.
And only after this remark does Kant suggest that children have an incli-
nation to freedom that must not be merely curbed but encouraged, which
would suggest that this is in some way a morally promising inclination to
freedom in general and not just an inclination to their own freedom. He
says:
The opinion of freedom is of very great importance; hence it is the respon-
sibility of all those who have power to preserve [erhalten] this opinion in
those who are under their power. For by that does one make it again at least
somewhat good that one assumes power over them. Thus children should
also be educated so that one always leaves them their freedom. One can
so make it that when they do not do what we want yet one does not do
something to them that is against what they want, and this freedom is an
element at which one aims in the general effort in the art of education. For
it is of no great use to train a child like a hound. The child must not find
its advantage except in good conduct [Wohlverhalten], and then it sees that
in time it must adopt rational maxims. (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1145–6)
Kant often says that we must make it seem to children that what we want
them to do is in fact what they want to do, and this might sound like
nothing more than manipulating their inclination for their own freedom
130 Paul Guyer
for our ends or to make them happy after our own conception of their
happiness rather than theirs. But the opening and closing sentences of the
paragraph suggest something more, namely that the child’s opinion about
freedom must be preserved, which suggests that it cannot be merely self-
centered, but must already include some inclination in favor of the freedom
of all, not just the child’s own, and that if the child’s opinion about freedom
is properly preserved and cultivated, it will lead to the adoption of rational,
which is to say moral, maxims, which likewise suggests that it must in some
way be a inclination toward the freedom of all.
This paragraph might be a slender thread from which to hang the
claim that Kant’s anthropology now includes a natural inclination toward
the freedom of all, but it at least suggests such a thought, and in any
case Kant’s remarks recorded in Menschenkunde clearly suggest that the
idea that freedom is an ultimate end or value in itself and not just a
necessary condition and thus a means for happiness, which is nothing
but the satisfaction of particular inclinations, is part of our empirical
psychology, something confirmed by experience.
4. From inclination to enthusiasm

We might hope to find a straightforward progression in Kant’s thought on
the inclination to freedom from a self-interested to a moral conception of
it, and thus might expect to find the latter conception of this inclination
further developed in his own published version of his anthropology, namely
the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View of 1798. But that might be
too much to expect since this work, published as Kant was about to lose his
ability to construct a coherent work from rich materials, as we know from
the case of the Opus postumum, obviously drew on his own notes for his
anthropology course, given as we have seen over a period of twenty-five years
and in turn building on materials going back another ten years, namely
the notes in his copy of the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime. And in fact what he has to say about the inclination to freedom,
indeed what he now calls “the inclination to freedom as a passion,” is
ambivalent, in some ways suggesting the more moralized conception of
this inclination that we found suggested in Menschenkunde, and in other
ways not. What he says in the published work needs to be quoted at
some length. He starts by saying, “For the natural human being” “the
inclination to freedom as a passion” “is the most violent inclination of all,
in a condition where he cannot avoid making reciprocal claims on others.”
He then continues:
Whoever is able to be happy only according to another person’s choice (no
matter how benevolent this other person may be) rightly feels that he is
unhappy. For what guarantee has he that his powerful fellow human being’s
judgment about his well-being will agree with his own? The savage (not yet
habituated to submission) knows no greater misfortune than to have this
befall him, and rightly so, as long as no public law protects him until the time
when discipline has gradually made him patient in submission . . . Even the
child who has just wrenched itself from the mother’s womb seems to enter
the world with loud cries, unlike all other animals, simply because it regards
the inability to make use of its limbs as constraint, and thus it immediately
announces its claim to freedom (a representation that no other animal
has) . . . Mere hunting peoples . . . have really ennobled themselves by this
feeling of freedom . . . Thus it is not only the concept of freedom under moral
laws that arouses an affect, which is called enthusiasm [Enthusiasm], but the
mere sensible representation of outer freedom heightens the inclination to
persist in it or to extend it into a violent passion, by analogy with the concept
of right. (A 7:268–9, original emphasis)
This passage is hard to interpret, for its opening suggests once again just
that human beings naturally have an inclination toward their own freedom
(for can infants really be thought to have an inclination toward the freedom
of others?), and one that can indeed become violent. Yet Kant goes on to say
that what is apparently this same inclination can ennoble some primitive
peoples, and then he seems to shift ground yet again by suggesting that
even if the natural and potentially passionate inclination toward one’s own
freedom is not the same thing as an inclination for the freedom of all, there
is nevertheless an affect, thus also a psychological state or tendency, toward
the “concept of freedom under moral laws” – that is, the freedom of all,
not just oneself – a psychological state that can be called “enthusiasm”
but obviously not in the pejorative sense that this term so commonly had
for Enlightenment thinkers.12 Perhaps we can only conclude that Kant
thinks either that within the natural inclination to freedom, originally
directed at one’s own freedom, there is some sort of potential inclination
to the freedom of all that can be developed with proper upbringing and
education, or that alongside the inclination to one’s own freedom there
is also a natural potential for positive affect toward the freedom of all
that can be developed with proper upbringing and education. Either way,
proper upbringing and education can develop a proper enthusiasm for the
12 See, for example, Locke’s definition: “This I take to be properly Enthusiasm, which though founded
neither on Reason, nor Divine Revelation, but rising from the Conceits of a warmed or over-weening
Brain, works yet, where it once gets footing, more powerfully on the Perswasions and Actions of
Men, than either of those two, or both together” (Locke (1975), 699).
132 Paul Guyer
freedom of all that can prevent our original inclination toward our own
freedom from turning into a violent passion aimed exclusively at that, a
passion that can lead to the desire for vengeance instead of justice that is
“excitable” through “mere self-love” (A 7:270–1).
In the end, then, the published Anthropology does not tell us much about
the proper upbringing and education that are needed to refine enthusiasm
for the freedom of all from the inclination to freedom or to put the former
into a position to govern the latter, and thus does not clearly develop what
was at least hinted at in Menschenkunde. Whether Kant develops that hint
elsewhere, for example in the lectures on pedagogy, will have to remain a
question for another day.
c ha pte r 8
Empirical desire
Allen W. Wood
In the final published version of Kant’s lectures on anthropology, Anthro-

pology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), there are two main divisions:
I. Anthropological didactic, which provides an exposition of the three main
faculties of the mind – the cognitive faculty (A 7:127–229), the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure (A 7:230–50), and the faculty of desire (A 7:251–
82) – and ii. Anthropological characteristic (A 7:283–333). The explicit
subtitles of the two parts describe the first as “the art of cognizing the
interior as well as the exterior of the human being” and the second as
“the way of cognizing the interior of the human being from the exterior.”
But the division might be better understood as reflecting Kant’s distinc-
tion between “what nature makes of the human being” and “what he as a
free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself ” (A
7:119). The faculties of the mind, namely, constitute what nature provides
us, and our character displays what we have made of ourselves.
These two sides or aspects of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology were present
almost from the beginning of his anthropology lectures a quarter-century
before the published version. Both the Collins and the Parow transcriptions
(dated 1772–3) proceed through a discussion of the three faculties, and
then there occurs a section “On the character of the human being” that
introduces the materials later treated as Part ii (VA 25:5, 218, 241, 426).
In the Friedländer transcription (1775–6), the second part is explicitly
partitioned off as “ii. Anthropologiae” (VA-Friedländer 25:468, 624). In
the two more complete (not merely fragmentary) transcriptions of the
1780s – Menschenkunde (1781–2) and Mrongovius (1784–5), the explicit
divisions are repeated (25:852, 1156, 1208, 1367). But the apparent sharpness
of Kant’s division between “didactic” and “characteristic” (between the
part of human nature that is given through our faculties and the part we
make through our free agency) is belied even by Kant’s own treatments.
“Characteristic” itself begins not with what is self-made but with the
raw materials, so to speak, of human self-making: “the predispositions
133
134 Allen W. Wood
indicating what can be made of the human being” – natural aptitude
(Naturell) and temperament (A 7:285–91).
1. Desire
Kant defines “desire” (Begierde, appetitio) as “the self-determination of a
subject’s power through the representation of something future as an effect
of this representation” (A 7:251). A theoretical cognition is a representation
of an object that corresponds to the object (KrV A57–8/B82–3; VL 8:85–6),
and receptivity to the object (KrV A19–20/B33–4). Desire, by contrast, is
the causality of a subject’s representation, having a future object as its effect.
Here the object ought to correspond to the representation of it present in
desire.
Even more significant, however, for the relation between “didactic” and
“characteristic” (or between what nature makes of us and what we make of
ourselves) is Kant’s characterization of desire as a self-determination of the
subject’s power to bring about an object. Desires are never mere occurrences
(in us or to us), to which our free agency is simply passive. Even in empirical
desires we are already self-determining, thus always voluntarily complicit in
desiring. Kant’s focus in his discussion of the faculty of desire is on both
the feelings and the desires that pose obstacles to the rational agent, both
from the standpoint of prudence and from the standpoint of morality, in
the rational task of self-mastery and self-making.
2. Inclination
The central concept in Kant’s account of empirical desire is “inclination.”
But this is a more specific and also a more complex concept than is usually
appreciated. Much misguided discussion of Kant’s moral psychology tends
simply to equate “inclination” with “desire” (as if “inclination” were merely
Kant’s quaint eighteenth-century word for what we mean by “desire”). For
Kant, every desire (Begierde) or impulse (Antrieb) is the representation of
an object accompanied by a feeling of pleasure (Lust) (G 4:444; MS 6:211,
213; KpV 5:72, 116). In some desires (empirical desires) the feeling precedes
and grounds the desire, whereas in others (rational desires), the desire itself
(as a self-determination of the subject’s faculty of desire) comes first, and
the pleasure is the effect of this determination (KpV 5:8–9n; MS 6:211–13).
All action from reasons is action on a desire of the latter kind; and these
desires are neither empirical impulses nor empirical desires – though they
may rest on them, as when an instrumental reason serves an empirical
Empirical desire 135
desire, or an empirical desire constitutes a part of the whole of well-being
that we call our happiness (G 4:399, 418; MS 6:215–16, 480).
Inclination, in Kant’s sense of the term, is a desire that is not rationally
grounded in this way, but one where the feeling of pleasure accompanying
a representation grounds the desire for the object, rather than the desire
producing the feeling. Inclinations rest on instinct, which is the predispo-
sition to be pleased by something even before one possesses it (cf. A 7:265;
VA-Menschenkunde 25:1111–12; VA-Mrongovius 25:1339; VA-Busolt 25:1518).
Inclination requires acquaintance with the object, and even involves a
self-determination of the faculty of desire: “Inclination is a determinate
principle to desire an object, in so far as it is already known to me” (VA-
Friedländer 25:584, original emphasis). Kant does sometimes use the term
“inclination” to refer to the instinctive starting point in our animality for
these more complex empirical desires, but his main account of inclina-
tion refers to the more complex notion in which maxims and the exercise
of choice are involved. Inclinations (in this more complex sense) are not
directly under our control, but our volition is nevertheless involved in them
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1338).
Inclination is “habitual sensible desire” (A 7:251; cf. VA-Mrongovius
25:1339; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1109; VA-Busolt 25:1519; MS 6:212). “Habit-
ual” in this formulation is meant as the claim that the desire has been
taken up into a rule or maxim of the subject’s will. “A sensible desire that
serves the subject as a rule (habit) is called ‘inclination’ (inclinatio)” (A
7:265). Thus an inclination is not for a particular object, but for objects
of a general kind. “Inclinations are desires for objects of an entire genus
[Gattung]” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1140–1). An inclination is therefore not
a mere momentary impulse, nor is it something coming to the subject
merely from nature or “from outside.” It is rather a desire in which the
subject’s free agency, in the form of choice, comparison, and conceptual
generalization, also plays some part.
This voluntary feature of Kant’s conception of inclination shows itself
prominently in his account of the passions, to which we will return below.
It also shows itself in his conception of the radical evil in human nature
in Part One of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. There Kant
argues that we have an innate (though freely acquired) propensity (Hang)
to prefer incentives of self-love or inclination to those of duty (R 6:29,
32). Here “innateness” means that we must be regarded as having freely
brought this propensity upon ourselves prior to any act in time in which
it manifests itself (R 6:38). In the Religion, where Kant first genuinely
thematizes these issues, he does not regard our animality as the enemy of
136 Allen W. Wood
morality; nor, therefore, does he regard the natural or instinctual matter
of our inclinations as the source of the resistance or counterweight to
morality:
The ground of evil cannot be placed, as is commonly done, in the sensuous
nature of the human being, and in the natural inclinations originating from
it. For not only do those bear no direct relation to evil . . . but we also cannot
presume ourselves responsible for their existence. (R 6:35)
The Stoics, he says, “mistook their enemy, who is not to be sought in

the natural inclinations, which merely lack discipline and openly display
themselves unconcealed to everyone’s consciousness, but is rather an invis-
ible enemy, one who hides behind reason and is therefore all the more
dangerous” (R 6:57).
3. The “general objects” of human inclination

Our instincts as living natural beings – what Kant calls our “animality” –
give rise to a number of desires and satisfactions belonging to our nature,
those connected with our survival as individuals, the survival of our species,
and our sociability (A 7:321–2; R 6:26–7). We might think (and it belongs
to the common images of Kant’s moral psychology) that the gratification
of these natural desires would constitute the chief objects of our empirical
desires or inclinations. But we saw above that “inclination” for Kant refers
to a desire for a kind of object, not for individual objects. Thus when Kant
explicitly inquires about “the objects of our inclinations,” he identifies
certain general objects. Moreover, his account is strikingly at variance with
any that might emphasize the natural, instinctive or animal content of our
empirical desires.
To begin with, Kant distinguishes “formal” objects of empirical desire
from “material” objects (VP 9:491; cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1141, 1148; VA-
Mrongovius 25:1354). The latter relate directly to objects and specific ends
of desire, such as delusion or pleasure. But Kant thinks that those objects
of human inclination which are both powerful enough and determinate
enough to pertain to human nature in general are not the “material” ones
at all, but rather the “formal” ones. These do not include pleasure or
gratification themselves, but concern instead the mere possibility of desire
satisfaction. Kant identifies these formal objects as the resources (Vermögen)
to obtain such satisfaction, and the freedom needed to direct our powers
to the use of these resources. “We can think of two objects [Gegenstände]
of inclination which are completely general, where the inclinations have
no object [Object], but aim for means to satisfy the inclinations. These are
freedom and resources. Freedom is a negative resource” (VA-Friedländer
25:581; cf. VA-Collins 25:214).
Why does Kant locate the chief objects of our inclination in these formal
objects – in the mere means to agreeableness or satisfaction, rather than
directly in pleasure or gratification themselves, or in the natural objects that
provide it? The deepest reason is that Kant does not think that happiness
or contentment are among nature’s ends for human beings (A 7:230–1,
326; cf. Idea 8:21; RH 8:64–5; MA 8:112–13; KU 5:430–1, G 4:417–19,
423). Consequently, as human desirers we are so formed by nature that
we systematically prefer imaginary possible future satisfactions over actual
present satisfactions, and what we empirically desire with greatest strength
is the imagined means to these future satisfactions. In this way, Kant thinks,
nature has formed our faculty of empirical desire in such a way that we
remain discontented, and always motivated to develop faculties that benefit
the species, but not the individual:
The concept of happiness is not one that the human being has, say, abstracted
from his instincts and thus derived from the animality in himself; rather, it is
a mere idea of a state to which he would make his instincts adequate under
merely empirical conditions (which is impossible). He outlines this idea
himself, and indeed, thanks to the involvement of his understanding with
his imagination and his senses, in so many ways and with such frequent
changes that even if nature were to be completely subject to his will it
could still assume no universal and fixed law at all by means of which
to correspond to the unstable concept and thus with the end that each
arbitrarily sets himself . . . for his nature is not of the sort to call a halt
anywhere in possession and enjoyment and to be satisfied. (KU 5:430,
original emphasis; cf. G 4:417–19)
Here Kant shows his agreement with Rousseau, in the Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality, who represents the human being in the animal state
as contented, and ascribes all properly human misery (as well as all human
wickedness) to the perfectibility of our reason. This is also the point of Kant’s
thesis, expressed early in the Groundwork, that nature would have hit on a
very bad arrangement if it had given us reason only as a means to happiness,
since reason is actually counterproductive to that end (G 4:395–6). It is a
direct consequence of this idea that the most characteristic influential
objects of human inclination do not consist in actual gratification, but
rather in the imagined acquisition of means to imagined gratification,
which always flees from us like a will-o’-the-wisp. “Human beings often
prize the resources to make themselves happy – not his inclination to
138 Allen W. Wood
gratification itself – higher than the satisfaction of inclination itself. Skills
are often prized higher than their ends themselves, and this most strikingly
meets our eyes in the case of money” (VA-Collins 25:214).
The freedom that constitutes a chief object of human inclination is the
“external freedom” that grounds Kant’s theory of right, and constitutes the
sole innate right each of us has in virtue of our humanity: “independence
from being constrained by another’s choice” (MS 6:237). Freedom in this
sense is the social condition of not having our actions constrained by the
will of another:
I cannot hope that my condition will possibly conform to inclination if I

am not free; the inclination for freedom is the highest of all, because it is the
condition of all inclinations. The most terrible condition for a human being
is that in which another human being determines his condition, and cares
for his happiness in accordance with his inclinations. (VA-Collins 25:214; cf.
VA-Friedländer 25:581)
“Whoever is able to be happy only according to another person’s choice

(no matter how benevolent this other person may be) rightly feels that he
is unhappy” (A 7:268).
When resources are regarded as a general object of human inclination,
the concept is taken quite broadly, to include “1. Regard among human
beings. 2. Health and skill or talent and 3. Money” (VA-Collins 25:214).
“We can best express the 3 kinds of resources by strength, means, and
reputation, with which health, riches, and honor are placed parallel” (VA-
Friedländer 25:582; cf. VA-Mrongovius 25:1354). This trio is strikingly similar
to the account Kant gives at the beginning of the Groundwork of the
“gifts of fortune”: power, wealth, and honor, which, along with health and
happiness, belong to the class of limited goods (which are truly good only
when combined with a good will) (G 4:393). They also closely correspond,
as we shall see presently, with the objects of the three “social” passions to
which human beings are subject.
Freedom may be regarded as a “negative resource” in either of two senses.
First, freedom (as independence from the will of another) is a conditio sine
qua non of making your own use of whatever resources you have; and
second, your freedom negates the resources of others, by constituting your
exemption from the control that their resources enable them to exercise
over you – their strength to coerce you through fear; their money, which
controls you through the vulnerability of your needs as the means of their
satisfaction; or their honor and regard among human beings, which may
subject you to their control through human opinion (the opinions of
others to which you must pay some regard, or even through your own
opinion).
When we find Kant claiming that inclination is the enemy of morality
(G 4:405, 455; KpV 5:21–8; MS 6:376, 379–80), we should always think
not of people’s direct pursuit of such innocent satisfactions, but instead of
the social context in which this pursuit takes place: the powerful need of
human beings to assert their will in relation to others and to bring the wills
of others under their own sway. By twisting and subverting our proper
conceptions of self-valuation, social competitiveness also determines the
psychology of self-regarding vices, such as mendacity, avarice, and servility.
Self-regarding duties constitute no exception or counterexample whatever
to the thesis that, for Kant, social competitiveness or unsociable sociability
is the deepest source of all human vice and transgressions of moral duty
(see Wood (2009); and Wood (2014)).
4. Affects
Throughout Kant’s lectures on anthropology, the chief focus of his treat-
ment of the faculty of desire is on feelings and inclinations that pose a threat
to rational self-government, whether self-interested (prudential) or moral.
His main division is between “affect” (Affekt) and “passion” (Leidenschaft).
Kant tells us (VA-Friedländer 25:589; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1115) that he
derives this distinction from Francis Hutcheson, whose major work was
Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illus-
trations on the Moral Sense (London, 1728). It is questionable, however,
whether Kant’s conceptions are the same as Hutcheson’s, and the distinc-
tion between affect and passion was also already present in the empirical
psychology of Baumgarten.1
Both affects and passions are “motions” or “agitations” of the
mind (Gemüthsbewegungen), characterized by a loss of composure (VA-
Friedländer 25:589) and an incapacity of the mind to make comparisons
and estimate the relative value and importance of different feelings and
desires in relation to a rational sum or whole (VA-Collins 25:212; VA-Parow
25:411; VA-Friedländer 25:590; VA-Mrongovius 25:1340). The difference is
that affects are feelings that destroy our composure and our ability to make
rational comparisons, whereas passions are inclinations that do so. Kant
modifies his account a bit in the published Anthropology. He still regards
1 However, Kant may have derived his conception of passion at least in part from Hutcheson’s treatment
of the non-reflective passions, which can preoccupy and obstruct our reasoning, interfering both
with desire for the public good and with our desire for our own good. See Hutcheson (1971), 28–30.
140 Allen W. Wood
passions as inclinations that we cannot rationally compare with others or
with a whole in deciding what to do; but in addition to saying the analogous
thing about feelings in the case of affects (A 7:254), he also characterizes
affects as feelings that take us by surprise, so that we cannot rationally
decide whether to yield to them (A 7:251).
On either account, an affect is a sudden access of feeling that temporarily
takes away our capacity for rational self-government. Kant distinguishes
affects involving agreeable feelings (such as joy) from those that involve
disagreeable feelings (such as sadness or grief ) (A 7:254–5; cf. VA-Collins
25:215). He also distinguishes sthenic affects that come from strength (such
as anger or laughter) from “asthenic” affects that come from weakness (such
as fear or weeping) (A 7:255). All affects tend to be counterproductive to the
subject’s ends, since they prevent the subject from reflecting on the situation
and rationally deciding what to do (A 7:253); they are therefore opposed
to prudence as well as to morality (VA-Parow 25:412, VA-Menschenkunde
25:1119). But some affects are also directly counterproductive to the very
end involved in them – such as anger, which arouses hostility against us,
or shame, which makes us incapable of doing what we are ashamed of
being unable to do; both respond to an evil in precisely that way that does
not avert it but brings it on ourselves (A 7:260). On the other hand, Kant
thinks that nature implanted shame in us for a moral end: “The end of
the susceptibility to shame, which nature placed in us is to necessitate the
human being to truthfulness” (VA-Friedländer 25:599).
The apathy that Kant says is required for virtue is by no means an absence
of feelings generally, since some feelings are even conditions of moral agency
(MS 6:399–405); the apathy that he praises is instead the absence of affects,
which makes rational self-government possible (MS 6:406–9; A 7:253). “It
is not absence of feeling [Gefühllosigkeit], but a strength of soul, where
the mind of the human being always has such a firm hold on itself that
no attacks of joy or annoyance can remove its grip” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1121; cf. VA-Mrongovius 25:1341). Kant recognizes too that some affects
serve as a “temporary surrogate of reason,” as when feelings of sympathy
motivate us to help, or enthusiasm enlivens a good resolution (A 7:254).
Some affects, Kant thinks, are natural mechanisms promoting health: Kant
thinks that the weeping of a widow at her husband’s funeral is soothing
and restorative; anger (which Kant thinks is sometimes the only emotional
exercise some housewives get, as when they scold their children or servants)
can sometimes lead to an agreeable tiredness (as long as the children or
servants do not counteract the effect by resisting the scolding, and making
life even more difficult for the irascible housewife) (A 7:261–2).
5. Fear and courage

Kant’s discussion of affects also contains an interesting discussion of fear
and responses to it (A 7:256–9; VA-Menschenkunde 25:805–8). There he
draws a number of pertinent distinctions. Kant distinguishes different
degrees of fear, ranging from anxiety (Angst, Bangigkeit) to terror (Entset-
zen) as regards the degree to which they incapacitate us. He distinguishes
courage (Mut), which is the composure of mind that enables us to face
up to fear, from intrepidity (Unerschrockenheit), which is lack of suscep-
tibility to fear (A 7:256); and he defines boldness or daring (Kühnheit)
as “courage without reflection” (VA-Friedländer 25:595). Kant also distin-
guishes courage, as the ability to stand up to what is fearful, from patience,
which is the ability to endure it (A 7:257). He considers courage a char-
acter trait (a virtue), which may be distinguished from stoutheartedness
(Herzhaftigkeit) – a quality of temperament rather than of character (A
7:256). In the Groundwork, however, Kant classifies courage (Mut) as a
quality of temperament, which is among those “gifts of nature” that are
good only when combined with a good will (G 4:393). Properly speaking,
though, the moral virtue here is bravery (Tapferkeit), or “courage in con-
formity with law.” “Fearlessness alone is of no consequence; rather, it must
be joined with moral irreproachability” (A 7:259).
Kant holds that there is also an affect – a feeling belonging to sensibility,
but aroused by reason – that frequently accompanies the successful exercise
of the virtue of courage in facing danger and overcoming fear; this affect
can also be called “courage” (A 7:257). This might be to some extent at odds
with Kant’s general account of affects, because Kant tends to consider affects
as obstacles to rational self-control; but if some affects can be considered
surrogates of reason, it may not be inconsistent to hold that some of these
might also be products of reason (results of the direct influence of reason
on sensibility), in the same way Kant thinks about those feelings that are
necessary conditions of moral agency (moral feeling, conscience, love of
human beings, self-respect) (MS 6:399–405).
Kant also distinguishes courage as the facing down of physical danger
from “moral courage”:
If in doing something worthy of honor, we do not allow ourselves to be

intimidated by taunts and derisive ridicule of it, which is all the more
dangerous when sharpened by wit, but instead pursue our own course
steadfastly, we display a moral courage which many who show themselves
as brave figures on the battlefield or in a duel do not possess. (A 7:257)
142 Allen W. Wood
Finally, Kant asks whether the act of suicide can sometimes display
courage, especially when by it one avoids disgrace or dishonor. He appears
reluctantly to concede that there are such cases, and to admit that “it is
not always depraved, worthless souls who decide to rid themselves of the
burden of life” (A 7:259); but he never actually retracts his position that
suicide is a horrible act, whose morality he cannot defend. Here, as in some
passages in his lectures on ethics (VMo-Collins 27:370–5; VMo-Vigilantius
27:603, 628), Kant displays far more ambivalence and conflict in dealing
with this difficult topic than is commonly appreciated.
6. Feelings, values and “emotions”

Kant’s identification of courage as an affect also brings out another striking
feature of his taxonomy of desires and affective states: Kant has no single
term for what many of his commentators and critics like to call “emotion”
(as when the critics mistakenly attack him, usually based on misreadings of
G 4:397–9, for being “hostile to the emotions”). What we call “emotions”
usually involve both the affective states that Kant calls “feelings” or even
“affects,” but also states of desire or even intention. Both fear and courage,
for instance, as Kant understands them, include both kinds of state. This
parallels Kant’s account of love, which includes practical love – the volition
to benefit the beloved – but also love as a feeling, both an empirical
feeling (or “pathological love”) and the rational or moral feeling that is one
of the “aesthetic pre-concepts” (ästhetische Vorbegriffe) without which we
could not be motivated to our moral duty (MS 6:399, 401–2; cf. G 4:399).
These are feelings which it cannot be our duty to have, but only because
they are presupposed by acting from duty. (Thus far from being “hostile
to emotion,” even as feeling, Kant holds that we could not be motivated
to do our duty without it.) Kant associates feelings with desires in this
way because for him, feelings are themselves valuational. Pleasure and
displeasure (both in human beings and in nonhuman animals) are states
involving the furthering or hindering of life processes, while joy and sadness
involve comparative judgments on our condition across time, requiring
reason (so that Kant denies these last two feelings to nonhuman animals)
(A 7:230–1, 254–5; cf. KU 5:187; VA-Parow 25:422; VA-Menschenkunde
25:1082). Because Kant holds that feelings involve valuations, and even
rational valuations, Kant’s claim that pure reason can of itself be practical
(KpV 5:31) can be reconciled with his claim that duty can be motivated by
respect for the moral law, as well as for other moral feelings (KpV 5:78; G
4:401; MS 6:399–403).2
2 See McCarty (1993), 421–35, Guyer (2000), 288–301, De Witt (2014).
7. Passions
Affects often interfere with rational self-government, and we are respon-
sible for what we do under their influence: “The human being is never
to be excused on account of this alleged powerlessness or unconscious-
ness [Ohnmacht]” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1124). But Kant considers affects
unfortunate rather than evil (A 7:267). They are not the direct enemy of
moral virtue; that enemy is passion – or at least certain passions, that in
Kant’s view form an important part of human social psychology.
“Passion” (Leidenschaft) is defined as “inclination that can be conquered
only with difficulty or not at all by the subject’s reason” (A 7:251). A
passion is an inclination that resists rational comparison with other incli-
nations, or with rational grounds (of instrumental reason, prudence, or
morality). Kant therefore characterizes passion as a “mania” or “addiction”
(Sucht). “Inclination that prevents reason from comparing it with the sum
of all inclinations in respect to a certain choice is passion (passio animi)”
(A 7:265). This resistance, however, is not merely an innocent absence of
comparison, as might happen with a momentary impulse, or an affect;
on the contrary, since inclinations themselves are already habitual desires,
involving generalization, comparison, and the choice of maxims, a passion
necessarily involves a positive choice, maxim, of refusing rational compar-
ison with other inclinations or rational grounds. It is an empirical desire
that can never be fully satisfied (A 7:266), because it involves delusion
(Wahn), or even the inclination to be deluded (A 7:274–5).
A passion is an inclination that represents its object as desirable out
of all proportion to its actual worth, and also often as obtainable under
circumstances, or in ways, that it plainly is not. The subject of a passion
is therefore often willing to run extreme risks, or even engage compul-
sively in directly counterproductive behavior, in pursuit of the object. An
ambitious person, for instance, who seeks honor from others, wants the
love and approval of others, and the pleasures of social intercourse with
them:
However, if he is a passionately ambitious person, then he is blind to these
ends, though his inclinations still summon him to them, and he overlooks
completely the risk he is running that he will be hated by others, or avoided
in social intercourse, or impoverished through his expenditures. (A 7:266)
Passions can therefore be called “inclinations of delusion, which consists in

valuing the mere opinion of others regarding the worth of things as equal
to their real worth” (A 7:270). We see here that not only the object, but
even the delusion, involved in passions is social in context and content.
144 Allen W. Wood
8. We are responsible for our passions

Although the term “passion” (Leidenschaft) (in German as well as in English
and Romance languages) implies passivity, this is more a feature of the way
such inclinations are experienced by the subject (who may be involved
in self-opacity and self-deception) than a genuine property of them. As
we have seen, all inclination, as habitual desire, involves a maxim freely
adopted by the subject. Kant is especially emphatic about this point in the
case of passions: “Passion always presupposes a maxim on the part of the
subject, to act according to an end prescribed to him by his inclination.
Passion is therefore always connected with his reason, and one can no more
attribute passion to mere animals than to pure rational beings” (A 7:266).
(Passions are irrational, and irrationality – the flagrant misuse of reason,
or perverse refusal to act in accordance with it – is something of which
only rational beings are capable.) Passion, Kant says, is a sickness, but of a
peculiar kind: “Passions are cancerous sores for pure practical reason, and
for the most part they are incurable because the sick person does not want
to be cured and flees from the dominion of principles by which alone a
cure could occur” (A 7:266).
Because it “makes part of what is desirable into the whole,” a passion
“directly contradicts the formal principle of reason itself. That is why pas-
sions are not, like affects, merely unfortunate states of mind full of many
ills, but are without exception evil as well . . . [They are] not merely prag-
matically ruinous but also morally reprehensible” (A 7:266–7). Principles
of practical reason involve the relation between actions and their objects,
hence comparisons between different desires. Instrumental reason bids us
do (and hence desire to do) what is necessary to further an end we have
set; prudential reason counsels us to compare our inclinations with one
another and with our means for satisfying them, and pursue their greatest
total satisfaction (our happiness) rather than the satisfaction of momentary
impulses or inclinations that might frustrate happiness. Moral reason com-
mands us to set certain ends required by the categorical imperative, and to
forego the satisfaction of inclinations that conflict with them. Therefore,
when passions refuse all comparisons between desires, they involve a maxim
of choosing to satisfy an inclination rather than complying with a principle
of reason. This is why Kant mentions passions prominently in connection
with evil (R 6:30, 93). Kant’s views about the motivated irrationality of evil,
and (for that matter) all the paradoxes associated with motivated irrational-
ity (including self-deception, akrasia, and lack of self-control), therefore
involve the passions.
9. Passions and human sociability

Just as passions are functions (or misfunctions) of our reason, they are also,
in Kant’s view, functions solely of our social condition:
It is not the instigation of nature that arouses what should properly be

called the passions, which wreak such great devastation in his originally good
predisposition. His needs are but limited, and his state of mind in providing
for them moderate and tranquil. He is poor (or considers himself so) only
to the extent that he is anxious that other human beings will consider him
poor and will despise him for it. Envy, addiction to power, avarice, and
the malignant inclinations associated with these, assail his nature, which
on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among human beings. Nor is it
necessary to assume that these are sunk into evil, and are examples that lead
him astray: it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and that
they are human beings, and they will mutually corrupt one another’s moral
disposition and make one another evil. (R 6:93–4, original emphasis)
Non-rational animals, Kant says, are capable of desiring things strongly or

violently (for example, sexual union); but these are never passions, because
animals lack reason, with which passion comes into collision, and therefore
they lack the freedom to choose the object contrary to principles of rea-
son. Many things that human beings desire strongly (drinking, gambling,
hunting), they are said to desire passionately. But Kant does not regard such
desires as true passions, because they are really “only so many different states
of mere passivity in the faculty of desire, and they deserve to be classified
not according to the objects of the faculty of desire as things (which are
innumerable)” (A 7:269, original emphasis; cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1142),
but instead one properly classifies passions
according to the principle of the use or abuse that human beings make of
their person and their freedom among one another, when one human being
makes another a mere means to this ends. Passions actually are directed
only to human beings and can be satisfied only by them. (A 7:269–70; cf. A
7:268; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1141–2; VA-Mrongovius 25:1359)
10. Natural passions

Kant divides passions, however, into “natural” and “social.” Natural pas-
sions, every bit as much as social passions, are directed at other human
beings, but they belong to what is “innate,” and not from culture, or what
is acquired (A 7:267). Kant identifies two natural passions: for freedom and
146 Allen W. Wood
for sex (A 7:268; cf. VA-Mrongovius 25:1359–61), though he also discusses the
passion for vengeance under the heading of natural passions (A 7:270–1).
11. The passion for freedom

We saw earlier that Kant regards freedom (external freedom, independence
of the will of another) as the most fundamental object of human inclina-
tions. It is also, and for the same reason, the object of the most violent of
all human passions. Kant thinks that the cry of the newborn infant is a wail
of rage, occasioned by his inability to use his limbs, which it experiences
as a kind of external constraint (A 7:268). According to Kant, the brutal
savagery of “uncivilized” or pre-agricultural peoples (hunter-gatherers and
pastoral nomads) is due to their refusal to submit to the external rule of
right, which is a condition for all agriculture and the civilized society based
upon it (A 7:269; cf. R 6:32–3):
The savage (who is not habituated to submission) knows no greater mis-
fortune than falling into [the power of another]; and he is right, as long
as there is no public law to protect him . . . This accounts for his constant
state of warfare, by which he intends to keep others as far away from him as
possible. (A 7:268)
In the natural passion for freedom
we see in the complacency with which the victors praise their great deeds
(massacring whole peoples, swooping down on them without sparing any,
and the like) that what they really value in these deeds is only their own
superiority and the destruction they are able to wreak. (R 6:33)
The passion for freedom is thus only the pre-cultural (or “uncivilized”)
form taken by the social passion for domination over others: “The human
being’s self-will is always ready to break forth into hostility toward his
neighbors, and always presses him to claim unconditional freedom, not
merely independence of others but even mastery over other beings that are
his equals by nature” (A 7:327).
12. Sexual passion

Kant understands sexual passion as the desire to use another person’s body
for the gratification of merely animal impulses (A 7:136). Because it is
directed not at the whole person, but only at the person’s sex organs, and
through the use of this part (without considering the person as a whole),
the meaning of sexual desire is to dominate and degrade. “Because sexuality
is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such but
is an inclination for the sex of the other, it is a principle of the degradation
of humanity . . . a preference for dishonoring [humanity] in order to satisfy
an inclination” (VMo-Collins 27:385).
Kant allows that sexual desire can be combined with genuine love
(though he regards the combination as inherently unstable). He also sees
sexual desire, imaginatively transformed and combined in the social con-
dition with the experience of sexual refusal, as the psychosocial source of
respect for personality, of moral feelings generally and of the human capac-
ity to control inclinations through reason (MA 8:113). It is a striking and
underappreciated aspect of Kant’s moral psychology that he thinks that the
fundamental moral feeling of respect is rooted in human sexuality.3 But sexual
passion is not the source of morality or respect, except in the sense that
it is the form of human desire that makes respect necessary, and poses a
constant threat to it.
Kant’s views on sexuality, and especially his views on women (his views
on the inherent limitations on their intellectual capacities and their properly
subordinate role in society), contain much that is nowadays either laughable
or morally repugnant to enlightened sensibilities. But this should not be
allowed to conceal from us the fact that one of Kant’s main preoccupations
in this area is with protecting the woman’s basic right and dignity from
assaults (economic and social as well as direct and violent) that are made
possible by the physical and social superiority that men have over women.
There is nothing outdated or unenlightened about that concern.
13. Social passions

In the Groundwork, Kant lists among the “gifts of fortune” the trio of power,
wealth, and honor (G 4:393). We probably do not appreciate that here he is
also giving us, in outline, and by way of their respective objects, his theory of
the social passions: tyranny (or the addiction to domination, Herrschsucht),
greed (the addiction to possessing, Habsucht) and ambition (the addiction to
honor, Ehrsucht). The same trio lies behind Kant’s earlier threefold division
of “resources” (as formal objects of inclination): “Resources are threefold:
talent, power, and money; on this are grounded the three inclinations:
ambition, tyranny, and greed. These are the three passions, which pertain
to the three resources through which we seek to satisfy all our inclinations”
(VA-Menschenkunde 25:1141). But the general aim of the social passions
consists of a pair of related objects: “obtaining rank or status among [our]
fellow human beings” (Idea 8:21) and “getting other people’s inclinations
3 For further discussion, see Wood (2008).

148 Allen W. Wood
into one’s power, so that one can direct and determine them according to
one’s intentions, [which is] almost the same as possessing others as mere
tools of one’s will” (A 7:271).
Through the social passions, we seek superiority or control over others in
specific ways: in tyranny, through their fear; in greed, through their interest;
in ambition, through their opinion (A 7:272). Recall too that in a passage
quoted above from the Religion, Kant attributed to our social condition
the evil inclinations “envy, addiction to power, avarice” – the very same
trio, once we realize that “avarice” is another term for greed, and that envy
is only the vicious side of failed ambition. In this trio of social passions, the
predisposition to humanity (the capacity to set ends according to reason),
in its development by human beings themselves through freedom, turns
into what Kant elsewhere calls “unsociable sociability” (Idea 8:20–1) or the
“self-conceit” which needs to be “struck down” or “humiliated” through
respect for the moral law (KpV 5:73). Here it becomes quite clear why Kant
thinks of the passions, especially the social passions, as lying close to the
source of the radical evil in human nature.
Passions involve not only moral evil, but also imprudence, and they are
frequently irrational in the direct sense that they are counterproductive to
the very end they propose. More specifically, if every passion involves the
end of attaining superiority and control of another, passions also – by the
irrationality and delusion involved in them – make us, on the contrary,
inferior to those who know how to make use of our passions against us,
hence vulnerable to the domination and control of others. Every passion
involves “a slavish disposition, through which another, having gained power
over it, acquires the capacity to use one’s own inclinations to serve his aims”
(A 7:272).4 The greedy are the most easily swindled; those who seek power
are often the most slavish followers of those they think can give it to them;
and those who most passionately seek the admiration of others tend to be
the most fawning admirers. “Here the human being becomes the dupe of
his own inclinations, and in his use of such means he misses his final end”
(A 7:271).
14. Kant’s judgment on the passions

Kant considers, but roundly rejects, the saying (later taken up with approval
by both Hegel and Emerson) that “nothing great in the world has ever
4 “One believes himself the others’ master, yet is more a slave than they” (Rousseau (1997), Book i,
Chapter 1, 41).
been accomplished without intense passions, and that Providence itself has
wisely implanted passions in human nature, just like elastic springs.”5 No
doubt some eulogies of the passions use the word “passion” in a broader (or
even an entirely different) sense from Kant’s. But Kant’s rejection of this
and other expressions of praise for the passions acknowledges no use of the
word in which it might refer to something favorable. “The philosopher,”
he says, “must not accept this principle, not even to praise the passions as
a provisional arrangement of Providence” (A 7:267).
Kant’s virtually unqualified condemnation of the passions in his mature
writings contrasts somewhat, however, with his treatment of them in
Anthropologie Friedländer (1775–6). Instead of treating passions as dis-
tinctively human and involving a self-imposed and voluntary refusal of
rationality, that discussion considers both passions and affects as originally
functions of our animality (VA-Friedländer 25:616–17). In response to the
question whether affects and passions are good, or always to be subdued,
he replies that passions may be considered good as part of the order of
nature, but cannot be approved from the standpoint of the rule of reason
Kant’s discussion here, both in its naturalistic starting point and in some
of its observations, reflects the possible influence of Shaftesbury’s qualified
praise of the passions in Book ii, Part i, Section iii of An Inquiry Concerning
Virtue or Merit (1711) (Shaftesbury (1964), Volume 1, 285–317). Kant appears
even to consider it possible for passions to be praiseworthy, and to arise
from reflection or even from principles:
5 Kant’s source for this quotation has not been identified. The closest antecedent I have been able to
find among works with which Kant would have been familiar is the following from Shaftesbury:
“Something there will be of extravagance and fury, when the ideas or images received are too big for
the narrow human vessel to contain. So that inspiration may be justly called divine enthusiasm; for
the word itself signifies divine presence, and was made use of by the philosopher whom the earliest
Christian Fathers called divine [sc. Plato], to express whatever was sublime in human passions. This
was the spirit he allotted to heroes, statesmen, poets, orators, musicians, and even philosophers
themselves. Nor can we, of our own accord, forbear ascribing to a noble enthusiasm whatever is
greatly performed by any of these” (Shaftesbury (1964), Volume 1, 38–9). Hegel holds that world-
historical transitions are effected by men driven by passion in precisely Kant’s sense: a mania or
obsession focused narrowly on a determinate goal, which respects neither morality nor prudence.
He thinks this kind of motivation is necessary if world-historical individuals such as Alexander the
Great, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte are to overturn one world order or system of ethical
life and usher a new one into being. The world-historical justification that Hegel insists their actions
possess does not prevent Hegel from agreeing with Kant’s views on passion by depicting world-
historical individuals neither as morally virtuous nor as achieving happiness (since they die early, like
Alexander; are murdered, like Caesar; or are transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon). See Hegel
(1975), 73. In Emerson’s version, the saying is, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”
(Emerson (2000), 262).
150 Allen W. Wood
There exist some passions, which for that reason, because they are passions,
are good-natured, and thus have a greater degree of worth as passions, than if
they were only inclinations. [They] arise from reflection or from principles,
and the action which arises from the passion, thereby receives a worth.
Kant’s only examples, however, are drawn not from the natural or social
passions discussed above, but only from cases of the passion of love – which
even later Kant considers a passion, though only as long as it remains
unrequited (A 7:266). In Anthropologie Friedländer, however, Kant says
that in some cases love is considered better when it is passionate than when
it arises from deliberation or duty; he instances here the love of a husband
for his wife, and the love of parents for their children (VA-Friedländer
25:613–15).
This might even be seen as a kind of agreement with Bernard Williams,
when he accuses moralists (including Kant) of entertaining “one thought
too many” in endorsing morally reflective reasons for acting out of love,
when we might think it more natural and more admirable to act sponta-
neously and from passion (Williams (1981), “Persons, Character, Morality”).
But Kant’s further discussion of the husband’s love makes one shrewd and
salient point found also in Kant’s later treatment of passion, namely that
the wife’s desire to be loved passionately (rather than from mere inclina-
tion, much less from duty or rational reflection) by no means arises from
her love for him, but rather from her desire – by no means innocent – to
be superior, to exercise power and control:
Thus, for example, a woman does not like to see it, when she is loved by
her husband only from duty, from mature deliberation. True, it is agreeable
for her that he cares for her as her husband, and gives evidence of genuine
benevolence toward her; however, she still considers herself less fortunate,
if her husband loves her due to reflection and not due to passion, so that
he cannot live without her. The reason is this: passion is a means of ruling
the other. Who has passion can be ruled by means of it by the one toward
whom it is directed, and therefore, if the man loves her due to passion, the
woman has power over him. But if the man loves solely due to inclination,
so that he is not in love, then he is that much less [subject] to being ruled
by his wife, for thereby, that he becomes weak, his wife becomes strong.
This is a thoroughly Kantian thought, and entirely consistent with his later
condemnation of the passions. It is also one thought too many for Williams’s
arguments: that is, it is a thought whose implications would discredit them.
c ha pte r 9
Kant as “vitalist”: the “principium of life” in

Anthropologie Friedländer
Susan Meld Shell
1. Background
Kant’s so-called “silent decade,” the period extending roughly from 1771
to 1781, represents one of the persistent mysteries of his intellectual devel-
opment. During this period, in which he was also hard at work on his
long-promised “critique of reason,” Kant produced only a few brief essays
and reviews (on human anatomy, race, and Basedow’s Philanthropin).1
Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology opens a welcome window on these years. Of
these lecture series, Anthropologie Friedländer (1775–6) is especially impor-
tant, both for its relative completeness, and for its date, midway through
the decade, after three years of almost total public silence on Kant’s part.
Indeed, Friedländer, along with the roughly contemporaneous Philosophic
Encyclopedia Lectures, and Kaehler Lectures on Ethics, represents our only
extended written evidence concerning Kant’s thinking during this crucial
period.
Friedländer captures Kant at a high-water mark in his confidence in
“pragmatic anthropology” as a means of discovering and promoting the
twofold “determination” (Bestimmung) of man. A 1773 letter to Marcus
Hertz, in which Kant apologizes for the delayed appearance of a work
of transcendental philosophy that he had announced as forthcoming in a
letter of the previous year, provides a useful introduction to Kant’s then
understanding of the relation of anthropology to his overall critical project.
A “critique of pure reason,” as he here calls it, will (he hopes) not only
“for the first time give philosophy an enduring way [daurerhafte Art] but
also give a favorable turn to both morality and religion” (C 10:144). After
cautioning Hertz against forgetting that the “highest ground” of moral
philosophy cannot be a “mere speculative representation” but must have
1 The Anthropologie Friedländer ends with a striking encomium to the Philanthropin, described as “the
greatest phenomenon for the improvement of humanity to appear in this century” (VA-Friedländer
25:722–3; my translation). (All translations from the Lectures on Anthropology are my own.)
151
152 Susan Meld Shell
“moving force” (Bewegkraft), and after commending his friend’s recent
review of Platner’s Anthropologie, Kant adds:
This winter, for the second time, I am giving a lecture course on anthropol-
ogy, which I now intend to make into a proper academic discipline. But my
plan [Plan] is quite unique. The intention that I have is to disclose through it
the sources of all the sciences, that of morals, of skill, of social intercourse, of
the method of forming [bilden] and governing [regieren] human beings, and
thus of everything [pertaining to] the practical . . . I include so many obser-
vations of common life [gemeinen Leben] that my listeners have constant
occasion to compare their ordinary experience with my remarks and thus,
from beginning to end, find the lectures entertaining and never dry. In my
spare time, I am working on a preparatory exercise for academic youth out
of this (in my view) very pleasant observational doctrine [Beobachtungslehre]
of skill [Geschichtlichkeit], prudence [Klugheit], and even wisdom [Weisheit]
that, along with physical geography, is distinct from all other instruction
and can be called knowledge of the world. (C 10:145–6)
The originality of Kant’s plan lies as much in its appeal to “pleasure” as in its
bracing intellectual ambition: nothing less than disclosure of “the sources
of all the sciences” with a view to everything pertaining to the “practical,”
be it skill, prudence or (even) wisdom; and it serves as a gentle reminder to
his eager friend and former student that, as Kant earlier puts it, “although
the highest ground of morality is intellectual, it must also have an exact
relation to the primary incentives of the will” (C 10:145).
The Friedländer transcript, based on the course that Kant delivered two
years later, fulfills that ambition to a remarkable degree; read in the order
in which Kant delivered it, the lectures attempt both a comprehensive
account of “all human relations” (as he puts it) and a partial answer to the
question, pressing both philosophically and pedagogically, that Kant’s letter
had left hanging, namely how moral ideas – concepts, that is, whose source
is purely intellectual – can have “moving force” in the world in which we
actually live. Kant’s tentative answer hinges, as we shall see, on the relation
between a lower “principle of life,” and a higher principle of “activity” or
(lawful) “freedom.” Human ills arise from the discrepancy between two
accompanying “determinations” – one toward our animal survival, the
other toward the development of reason. Their reconciliation is impeded,
in modern times, by the opposing intellectual vices of “enthusiasm” on
the one hand and “pedantry” (Pedanterie) on the other, culminating in
a peculiar sort of rational self-loathing or “misology.” As we shall see,
pragmatic anthropology helps to counter that spiritual life-threat with a
history of the human race that makes reason’s true “end,” which is practical
and moral rather than speculative, newly self-transparent.
The “principium of life” in Anthropologie Friedländer 153
So conceived, “pragmatic anthropology” not only allows Kant to pro-
visionally address the “precise relation” between the “highest ground of
morality” and the “the primary incentives of the will” (as he puts it in
his letter to Hertz); it also reflects Kant’s lingering reliance on “inner
sense” to supply our primary “knowledge of the soul.” He is not yet
able to clarify, to his own satisfaction, the distinction between “psychol-
ogy,” on the one hand, and “critical” knowledge of the necessary formal
conditions that make empirical self-consciousness possible, on the other.
Kant’s “true idealism,” at this point, is “rational and moral”2 but not yet
“transcendental.”3
Kant’s brief essay on race (initially attached to the announcement of
his 1775 course on physical geography, and republished, with minor mod-
ifications, in 1777) sheds additional light on his general understanding
during this period of man’s twofold Bestimmung. In that essay, Kant traces
the regularly inherited differences between the various human races to the
stimulation of a variety of “predispositions,” each inherent in an original
human “germ,” that allowed early humans to adapt to a wide variety of
climates across the planet, thereby fostering our physical survival in an
environment subject to local catastrophe. A second predisposition, toward
the development of reason, unfolds differentially among the various races,
and emerges fully, as Kant here suggests, only among Europeans.
This two-stage model of human development had also marked the only
other work Kant published during the decade of the 1770s: a short review
of Moscati’s Anatomy that traced a number of human ailments, including
some from which Kant personally suffered, to the structural indeterminacy
of a body designed both for four-footed animal survival and for two-footed
rational discourse.4 Pragmatic anthropology as Kant conceives it in the mid
1770s permits us to anticipate historically (as we shall see) the union of our
animal and rational determinations, and thereby produce a realizable idea
of “humanity” as such.
2. “Pragmatic anthropology”
The announced subject of Friedländer is “knowledge of the world” (Kennt-
nis der Welt) of a sort that Kant for the first time calls “pragmatic,” a term
absent from the earlier Collins/Parow transcripts (from the early 1770s).
2 On Kant’s earlier “moral turn”, see Velkley (1989); and Shell and Velkley (2013), 3–14.
3 Cf. the “Philosophic Encyclopedia” lectures (PhilEnz 29:11, 23); for a general discussion of Kant’s
treatment of rational and empirical psychology during this period, see Dyck (2009).
4 For a fuller treatment, see Shell (1996), 273–5; on man’s twofold determination, see also Munzel
(1999), 337–45.
Pragmatic anthropology is neither “theoretical” nor “empirical” knowledge
(though it draws upon each) but instead specifically directed toward what
is “useful” to human beings (VA-Friedländer 25:469). Knowledge of the
world that remains only theoretical is defective in a crucial sense, namely
its failure to be of use (Gebrauch), which requires judgment (Urtheilskraft)
of a special kind (here identified as “prudence”). To be sure, even scholarly
learnedness requires prudence of a kind; still, unless supplemented and
completed by knowledge of the world, it is merely “pedantry,” a topic to
which Kant will soon return.
By “world” Kant here means “the sum total [Inbegriff] of relations into
which human beings can enter” insofar as they involve both “nature” and
“the human being.” The two branches of worldly knowledge are physical
geography and pragmatic anthropology. Physical geography is concerned
with our objective situation: the totality of man’s relations with the physi-
cal environment (or “outer sense”). Pragmatic anthropology is concerned,
additionally, with our subjective situation: the totality of human opin-
ions, desires, and attitudes (or “inner sense”). Even more than physical
geography, pragmatic anthropology interests us (VA-Friedländer 25:470).
Geographic knowledge of the world is merely local and contingent. Anthro-
pology, by way of contrast, is based on an “idea” (that all previous anthro-
pological inquiries have lacked) – one involving “general knowledge” of the
“nature of humanity,” with a view to “prudent use in life” (VA-Friedländer
25:471–2).
Gaining such universal knowledge, however, is no easy matter, and may
ultimately require a “world history” or “history of humanity [Menschheit],”
(as opposed to a mere history of human vicissitudes) that “has yet to be
written” (VA-Friedländer 25:472). Still, Kant takes an initial clue from
what he here calls our Selbstheit (VA-Friedländer 25:473). Knowledge of
the human being is at the same time “my knowledge.” Hence, “there must
lie at its basis [zum Grund . . . liegen]” a “natural knowledge” that allows
us to judge “what lies at the basis of every human being” (VA-Friedländer
25:471). The integral relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of
human nature as such makes possible the transformation of what would
otherwise be a mere aggregate of maxims into “science” in the genuine
sense (VA-Friedländer 25:471–2).
3. “Empirical psychology”
Part One, which is explicitly devoted to empirical psychology (VA-
Friedländer 25:558), deals with the three “sources” of the mind’s
“phenomena,” namely (1) cognition, (2) pleasure and displeasure, and (3)
desire.5
3.1. Cognition
Kant’s treatment of cognition begins with knowledge of our “selfhood”
(Selbstheit), a term that does not appear in other versions of the lectures or
elsewhere in his extant writings. By “selfhood” (Selbstheit) he here has in
mind, he says, the basic sense of personhood or individuality,6 inherent in
self-consciousness, that distinguishes the human being from all other living
beings on earth. Self-consciousness makes each of us a worldly focal point
that is both unique and irreducible to any other. This Selbstheit becomes
selfishess or egoism only when one no longer regards oneself as one worldly
focus among myriad others, as Kant puts it, but as the world’s sole “center”
(VA-Friedländer 25:476).7
Kant bases a “pragmatic” knowledge of the self not on rational psychol-
ogy, but on what is (empirically) contained in the self-intuition involved
when the term “I” is used in ordinary life – i.e. on a rough anticipation
of what he will later call the “existential” self (KrV B 422n). Accordingly,
he here draws the characteristics of substantiality and simplicity from how
we use the word “I” grammatically, in common speech. And he draws the
characteristic of “spontaneity” from the similarly speech-related fact that
“when I say: I act [thue], I am not moved [so werde ich nicht bewegt]”
Kant here leaves unsettled whether or not in saying “I act” I truly am
not moved by some foreign power or merely so regard myself. He leaves
unsettled, that is to say, whether by making use in this way of the concept
“I” we prove that we are free in a transcendental sense, as distinguished
from a merely “practical” sense, as he will later put it in the Groundwork
of the Metaphysics of Morals. But in either case, by virtue of this power to
acknowledge action as our own, we express both spirit (Geist) and Gemüth,8
5 While all three terms appear in Baumgarten’s text (on which Kant’s lectures are officially based),
pleasure (and pain) is not there discussed as a separate “faculty,” a treatment Kant may have partly
derived from Mendelssohn.
6 See also “Die Seele ist das eigentliche Ich” (VA-Friedländer 25:473). The term Selbstheit (which, in
its original use by mystics such as Meister Ekhart and Jakob Boehme, had a negative connotation)
subsequently drops from Kant’s vocabulary.
7 Rousseau’s “Savoyard Vicar” makes a similar claim; see Rousseau (1969), 602.
8 Gemüth resists ready translation into English. Each of the two most obvious choices – “heart” and
“mind” – has significant drawbacks. “Heart” seems better as a translation of Herz, which Kant later
defines as the sum total of the “forces of desire” as distinguished from those of “cognition” (for
which he uses the term “head” – Kopf) (VA-Friedländer 25:554). And “mind” suggests intellectual
and thereby demonstrably transcend the merely passive capacity (Fähigkeit)
to be determined “inwardly” by forces external to ourselves – a capacity we
share with animals (who, like us, possess a soul (anima)).9
Gemüth is the term that Kant here generally employs when speaking of
the “self” as an object of empirical self-consciousness.10 Gemüth, he says, is
the “way” (Art) in which the soul is affected by things, and involves an ability
(Vermögen) to reflect (reflectieren) upon one’s state and to relate it to oneself
and one’s personality, to “feel,” as he also puts it, “what one feels” (emphasis
added). At the same time, whereas Geist, or the “thinking subject,” is active,
Gemüth is (relatively) passive, a “good Gemüth,” connoting, for example,
facility in learning things (from others). As with the English “mood” (with
which it bears some etymological relation), Gemüth is where the soul
feels happiness or misery expressive of our condition as a “whole,” as
distinguished from isolated pains and pleasures that affect the soul (anima)
alone (VA-Friedländer 25:474).
Gemüth, in short, is irreducible to anima (which we share with animals)
and yet distinct, in its (relative) passivity, from “intellect” or Geist. The
ancients, whose ideal of self-control is partially Kant’s model here, as he
notes, have no strict verbal equivalent: animus (the closest Latin term) is
also synonymous with mens (generally translated by Kant as Geist), which
includes an intellectual element that Gemüth, whose perfection lies in being
mastered by the intellect, specifically excludes.
It is by virtue of Gemüth, which constitutes, as it were, the self as (passive)
“object” to itself, that man is both capable of and subject to “self-control,”
and thus regards himself as “twofold, namely as animal and as intelligence
[Intelligenz]” (VA-Friedländer 25:474). As animal, we are capable of feel-
ings, impressions, and representations; as intelligence we are conscious of
qualities involved in “mastering” the Gemüth. These qualities are instead associated with Kopf, whose
proportional arrangements, as we later learn, are as peculiar to each individual as one’s “face,”
with which, indeed, it bears a pragmatically discernible relation (the subject of “physiognomy”)
(VA-Friedländer 25:627, 663).
9 On Kant’s relation to “vitalists” like Stahl during this period, see Huneman (2008), 21–84. On
Kant’s general understanding of organic life at this time, see Zammito (2006); and Mensch (2013).
10 Kant also compares Gemüth to an optical box (optisch Kast) or magic lantern. Like the latter, Gemüth
is the seat of images (such as that of the future) that lack reality, as in involuntary dreaming or
voluntary prognostication (cf. VA-Friedländer 25:481, 25:501); see also Munzel’s helpful editorial
note in the Cambridge translation of the Lectures on Anthropology (528n7). Gemüth, in these lecture
notes, is the site or faculty through which the self is aware of how it is affected “as a whole,”
including how it is affected by its own active powers. Gemüth is a faculty of “reflection” in the sense
of “reflecting back” a primordial life activity (both voluntary and involuntary), and thus rendering it
inwardly observable (VA-Friedländer 25:424). As such, Gemüth is a quintessentially human faculty,
mediating between the soul, which “animates” the body, and “spirit” or “personality,” which may,
or may not, persist without it.
ourselves, and have power (Macht), as spirit (Geist), over our condition
and our animality. A kitten placed on a high shelf may well feel fear; but
it will not experience vertigo, which involves an irrational succumbing to
fear that it is in one’s power to counteract through understanding, and thus
illustrates that sort of thing, “belonging to Gemüth,” that a wise man, as
Kant puts it, should “keep distant” (VA-Friedländer 25:475; cf. 593).
The ability to gain mastery over one’s Gemüth also involves the possi-
bility of failure, accompanied by a “self-reproof ” reflective of the “natural
conflict” endemic to a “combined personality” like ours – one that is both
“dependent” (by virtue of its animality) and “masterful” (by virtue of its
spirit (Geist) or intelligence (Intelligenz)). The main task of “personality” is
to “lead soul and body into harmony [Harmonie]” – both through “compul-
sion,” and through “self-mastery via rules and discipline” (VA-Friedländer
25:476).
The domination of sensibility by the understanding, however, has its
limits. Without the senses, understanding lacks the power to “execute”
its rule (VA-Friedländer 25:486–7). The senses, as Kant puts it, are an
“incentive of the will [Will], but understanding has no incentive.” But
this only moves the problem back a step: “one does not see at all” how
understanding, “which lacks moving force [bewegende Kraft],” can “affect
the senses.”
Still, that ability is evinced in such ordinary cognitive acts as deliberately
paying attention to, or abstracting one’s attention from, whatever imme-
diately “affects one” (cf. Rousseau (1969), 573). This freedom to regard or
disregard aspects of our passive condition engages what Kant here calls the
“two formal forces” of the Gemüth, absent which “all other [mental] pro-
vision” would be “useless.” The greater one’s control over these two forces,
the greater the “perfection” of the Gemüth more generally, ultimately per-
mitting us to “put our fate in our own hands” by “ignoring ills that can’t
be changed” and concentrating on “the pleasant things” (VA-Friedländer
25:489).
At the same time, the propensity (Hang) of Gemüth “to complete every-
thing and make a certain whole” – a propensity on which awareness of
ourselves as objects of inner sense depends – makes attending easier than
abstracting, which requires “real effort.” Once imagination has presented
in advance “someone’s entire shape [Gestalt],” our attention tends to fixate
involuntarily on whatever is accidentally missing from the whole. Owing
to that propensity, one must often work to overcome fixations that pre-
vent one from estimating things at their “true value” (as with young men
who fix upon a worthy woman’s minor physical deficiencies and thus
deny themselves what might have been an “enduring happiness”) (VA-
Friedländer 25:490).
On the other hand, this same propensity (to form a whole) also gives
rise – in ways Kant is not yet able, as it seems, to specify precisely – to both
concept formation and the generation of ideas:
The faculty of forming [das Vermögen zu bilden] has a propensity to complete
the formation [auszubilden] of everything in our Gemüth. When we become
aware of something, we make a concept of it for ourselves. If the object
doesn’t harmonize with our concept, then the Gemüth persistently endeavors
to complete it. (VA-Friedländer 25:512)
This facultas perficiendi is “natural,” and “very good for us,” leading us “to
supply what is missing” – e.g., in the case of (the figure of ) Socrates, to fill
in the few shortcomings of his actual life to form a “complete wise man.”
And it also gives rise to what Kant here calls the “true idealism,” which
consists not in fixating upon inner sense, or what is idiosyncratic to oneself
(as with metaphysical and aesthetic idealists, respectively), but instead in
placing little value in external things:
He who fixes upon [statuirt] no object of outer sense is an idealist . . . We
can . . . represent a rational idealism, which consists in this: that our happi-
ness [Glück] does not depend on external things, but that things have the
value that we give them . . . Happiness doesn’t consist in things but in the
way [Art] in which the Gemüth accepts it. Gemüth can do much in this
regard: it can re-form [umformen] the whole world for itself. The empti-
ness of things and the brevity of life gives occasion for this . . . Gemüth can
thus easily have insight [einsehe] that true happiness rests on the idea, and
this is the true idealism, which is rational and practical. (VA-Friedländer
25:492–3)
But these world-constituting powers of the imagination (Phantasie) are
ambiguous in their effects (VA-Friedländer 25:511). On the one hand, they
support the “insight” that “true happiness rests on the idea” and thereby
put fortune within our power.11
On the other hand, the mind’s formative powers also expose us to the
danger of “enthusiasm,” i.e. “of taking the ideal for something real.” This
danger is heightened when those powers take the form of “composition”
11 They also seem to play a crucial role in the formation of concepts, at this stage of Kant’s thinking,
through what he calls the “three elements” of rule-governed “association” – namely time and space
(which pertain to sensibility) and affinity (Verwandtschaft) (which pertains to understanding) (VA-
Friedländer 25:513). What he here calls “affinity” will later become the category of relation (Relation),
“affinity” being reserved, according to his later “epigenetic” model, to the peculiar “kinship” that
links sensibility and understanding. On the latter, see Zöller (1988); Waxman (1991); 250–63; and
Mensch (2013), 125–45. Cf. A 7:176–7.
(Dichtung), which (unlike Phantasie, which runs on willy-nilly) involves
an “active, voluntary power” to produce “new representations.”
The forms of enthusiasm with which Friedländer especially concerns
itself are cases of idealism gone awry, as with disillusioned lovers, whose
undue demand for feminine perfection leads them to become misogynists,
or with Rousseau, whose enthusiasm for humanity similarly culminated
in misanthropy (VA-Friedländer 25:530). So, too, thoughtful individuals
may become enemies of reason out of disappointment with its inability to
satisfy their longing to know their future Bestimmung:
Misology is a property of reflective [nachdenkender] people, who under-
take investigations into their future vocation [Bestimmung] and chief ends,
investigations that culminate in this, that the human being has insight
into his ignorance [Unwißenheit]. Now if reason cannot do enough with
regard to knowledge [Wissen], if it cannot satisfy one in this . . . so that the
human being cannot look toward the goal and end of all things [das Ziel
und Ende aller Dinge12 nicht absieht], the human being betakes himself to
simple-mindedness and renounces reason entirely, in the same way that
someone becomes a misanthrope through the feeling of virtue – not because
he hates human beings, but because he doesn’t find them as he wishes them
to be . . . [Accordingly] one does not become a misologist out of hatred of
reason; indeed one esteems it, but because it gives poor service. One who
has become accustomed to using reason [die Vernunft zubrauchen], one who
has a propensity [Hang] thereto . . . thinks for the entire remainder of his
life . . . Misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs in the same way. It also arises
from an ill humor [Laune], not because one despises them, but because
one does not find in them what one believes, thus from entirely too great a
demand for their perfections. (VA-Friedländer 25:553)
Misology (Misologie) arises from human reason’s seeming “futility,” its
arousal of a demand (to know “the end of all things”) that it can meet only
negatively, with knowledge of our ignorance (VA-Friedländer 25:553).13
Pragmatic anthropology supplements that ignorance, as we shall see, by
offering a “plan” for realizing the end of things “historically”; that is to say,
through “politics and education.”
3.2. Pleasure and displeasure

To recognize something as good or bad does not suffice to make one like it
or dislike it, on Kant’s account; for this one also needs a faculty for feeling
12 Cf. Kant’s later essay entitled The End of All Things [1794] (ED 8:325–40).
13 The locus classicus of this argument is Plato’s Phaedo 89 d–e, which specifically concerns human
uncertainty about the status of the soul after death. (Plato mentions “misanthropy” in this context
but not “misogyny,” which would seem to be Kant’s own addition.) Cf. G 4:395.
pleasure and pain, which registers the effect things have on the “whole
of the Gemüth” (VA-Friedländer 25:559). Pleasure is the feeling “of the
promotion of life,” pain the feeling of its “hindrance.” (Life, for its part, is
“consciousness of a free and regular play of all the forces and faculties of the
human being.”) This pleasure takes three forms: sensual (which arises from
an elevation of organic functioning), aesthetic or “ideal” (which reflects the
free play of the powers of the mind), and “intellectual” or moral (which
consists in “consciousness of the use of freedom in accordance with rules”).
Despite the different kinds of goods they indicate, these various pleasures
make up a single “determinate sum” that constitutes a “feeling” for one’s
“life” or wellbeing “as a whole”:
Although our enjoyments are not uniform in accordance with the objects,
they can still be added together later, since they then constitute the whole of
well-being, just as if they were uniform. Although these enjoyments are very
different, and one is an ideal one, the other a sensual one, we still thus put
them together on an equal footing and take them in one sum. The reason
is: all delights relate to life. But life is a unity, and to the extent they are all
directed at this, they are all uniform. (VA-Friedländer 25:560–1)
The “unity” of life makes sensual, ideal, and intellectual pleasure mutually
commensurable (at this stage of Kant’s thinking). “Freedom” is the “greatest
life” (grösste Leben) of the human being, and is sensed as a maximum
continuous with vital feeling generally, rather than by the moral feeling
of “respect” – a feeling discontinuous with sensual pleasure (as in Kant’s
later moral writings, beginning with the Groundwork (G 4:401n)). This
commensurability renders different states of mind mutually comparable:
organic dysfunction can render that state so painful as to make death seem
preferable to ongoing survival (VA-Friedländer 25:561) (though, as he later
also insists, only moral self-reproach can make life truly not worth living
(VA-Friedländer 25:597)).
Through “deliberation” over time, or “practice,” one can achieve a state
of “equanimity” (Gleichmütigkeit) that makes possible real happiness. Such
equanimity, Kant says:
is properly the self-feeling of a healthy soul, just as the self-feeling of a

healthy body is complete health. One feels in oneself the source [Quell] of
life. Health of soul and body is certainly the greatest happiness [Glück]; it
is the greatest sum of pleasure and enjoyment [inasmuch as] the ground
thereof lies in the human being himself. (VA-Friedländer 25:561–2)
“Equanimity,” in short, is an imperturbable awareness of well-being:

Indifference due to insensitivity is stupidity, but equanimity is an effect of
strength and not of weakness; it consists in the possession of well-being
irrespective of the condition of external objects, and in the consciousness
of the mass [Größe] of well-being that outweighs all external circumstances.
Equanimity befits philosophers. (VA-Friedländer 25:561)
“Well-being,” Kant concludes, “must thus be a determinate sum [bes-
timmte Summe] that one feels in oneself.” This “constant enjoyment in
oneself,” in which true happiness consists, also depends upon the body,
making mastery over one’s “temperament,” or “the condition in which
the human being judges things in the world according to his disposition”
(VA-Friedländer 25:563), especially important, with particular emphasis on
disgust (Eckel) (here described as a feeling that makes life “hateful” to itself
(VA-Friedländer 25:566)).14 The “composed man” (gesetzten Mann) ratio-
nally estimates pains and pleasures at their proper worth relative to that
total sum (VA-Friedländer 25:571), both by keeping his Gemüth “distant”
in cases touching upon moral right and wrong (VA-Friedländer 25:475),
and by not letting trivial pains and pleasures “enter his Gemüth” at all.
3.3. Desire
The “force of a thinking being” to “determine itself to action” is “something
subtle,” that “cannot be explained precisely” (VA-Friedländer 25:577). Still,
it can be understood for (present) anthropological purposes, Kant says,
as that which serves “in the thinking self ” as “motive force in the cor-
poreal world.” Desires are either “driving” (treibende) or “idle” (müssig).
Driving desires accomplish in living beings what impact (Stoß) does to
lifeless beings. Thus “choleric” persons, as Kant here informs us, are more
prone to driving desires, while “phlegmatic” individuals are more prone
to idle ones (VA-Friedländer 25:577). The more “sources of activity” an
individual is “sensible of in himself,” the more his desires are “driving”
(or directed toward determining him to “action”) rather than “idle” (or
directed only toward an “idea,” without any accompanying effort toward
its realization). Driving desires “realize the sources of life” in purposive
activity, while idle ones exhaust them both “uselessly” or, in extremis, in a
manner contrary to their consciously intended purpose (in which case they
are called “passions”).
One can “satisfy” desire in one of two ways: either by possessing what
one desires (as with “simple” human beings), or by having everything that
14 Translating Eckel as “disgust,” which retains the hint of physicality that Kant here means to stress;
cf. A 7:250.
one regards as needful (as with the wise). The former is called “natural suf-
ficiency [Genugsamkeit],” the latter “acquired satisfaction” (VA-Friedländer
25:578; cf. Bem 20:2). Rational desires, which “especially refer to the moral,”
are those that the “good-natured” desire to have, and that even scoundrels
would choose “if it cost them nothing.” Such desires, which put desire in
general “in agreement with itself,” seem to depend “on each person’s will,”
though “to have such a will” is “difficult” – not least, owing to many peo-
ple’s “passionate” confusion of ends and means – be it wealth (in the case
of “misers”) or reputation (in the case of “honor-seekers”) (VA-Friedländer
25:587–8).
At what end, or ends, then, does reason properly aim? In part, at main-
taining that composure, or peace of mind (Gemüth), that permits us to
estimate objects at their true value, rather than succumbing to individual
passions and affects that make the part seem larger than the whole (VA-
Friedländer 25:591) – e.g. when a young man is unable to properly assess
a prospective bride because he is overly affected by her physical charms
(or defects) (VA-Friedländer 25:590). Indeed, the noblest movements of
the Gemüth may in this respect be the most harmful, for it is here (where
the object is not merely sensual) that one especially needs “the guidance
of reason.” By the same token, even if an affect or passion “is directed to
something good,” i.e. is in accordance with the purposes of nature, it is still
not completely vindicated, for the good must also be “cognized . . . through
the understanding,” or, as Kant also puts it here, “according to the form”
As for the manner of maintaining such composure: we should take
physical ills “to heart” – i.e. permit their entrance into the “totality” of
our desires – without “drawing them in” to the Gemüth – i.e. consciously
attend to them. In the moral sphere, by way of contrast, we must indeed
“draw everything into the Gemüth” – i.e. “esteem ourselves unhappy only if
we are unworthy of it,” for no merely external ill can make us so unhappy
that we are no longer worthy of living. Accordingly, we should show
courage (Muth) in the face of even the greatest ills, as we then at least
deserve respect (Achtung) rather than “degrading humanity” through lack
of fortitude (VA-Friedländer 25:597).
Are happiness and worthiness to be happy, then, continuous and homo-
geneous (as Kant’s treatment of [moral] freedom as “the greatest life”
suggests) or are they discontinuous and heterogeneous (as in Kant’s later
moral works, such as the Groundwork)? On this crucial point, Friedländer
seems to want it both ways: on the one hand, the “objects” of sensible and
spiritual pleasure are “different in kind”; on the other hand, they make up
a single “determinate sum” of “pleasure” that constitutes a “feeling for our
life as a whole” (cf. KpV 5:161–2, 86, 89). A similar ambivalence surrounds
Kant’s treatment of “disgust” (Eckel), one of three sorts of “revulsion,”
whose other forms include “hatred” and “contempt.” Of the three, disgust
has the peculiarity of “having no equivalent”; unlike other painful feelings,
disgust “inhibits the source of life” itself, and hence is inimical to the sort
of ideal pleasure to which other painful feelings lend themselves (as in
the case of tragedy). Unlike other painful feelings, in other words, which
can contribute indirectly to an “enlivened” state of mind, disgust entails
“revulsion for the object,” that is to say, revulsion “in and for itself ” or
“simply” (schlechterdings):
Motions of the Gemüth due to disgust suppress all enjoyment; it is the

feeling of lifelessness [Lebloskeit], for the individual is also incapable of
other feelings. Thus an individual can displease by his address, he can draw
hatred upon himself, which is only due to circumstances, but he is then thus
less hated by others. However, if he becomes disgusting, he sinks as low as
possible [am niedrigsten]. (VA-Friedländer 25:597–8)
Accordingly, “contempt” in extremis borders, Kant says, on disgust, rather

than on hatred, inasmuch as “an object of hate is only hated by his enemies”
but “an object of disgust is hated by all” (VA-Friedländer 25:598). At its
worst, in other words, moral vice “inhibits life” in the same way that objects
of physical disgust suppress the vital forces of the body. Kant’s provisional
effort to explain the mystery of desire (or how ideas can exercise moving
force) here leads him to assimilate a moral “non-equivalence” that Kant will
later associate with vice and virtue with the visceral feelings of abhorrence
that accompany the expulsion of harmful physical substances (cf. MS
6:425).
To be sure, the principles of “life” and of “activity” are not immediately
continuous but become so only when human “deliberation” becomes, as
it were, instinctual:
The immediate love of life sometimes does not agree with reason, for one
must also live in order to be quite miserable . . . Therefore the love of life as
a passion is to be approved only in a conditional way. However the instinct
of life must come from deliberation, since often someone lives [in a way that
brings] disgrace upon himself. Should an individual be given the choice by
a higher hand whether one preferred to live here for all eternity, but in such
a way as to live and be subjected to every fate . . . or to die as now happens,
such a person would be horrified at living in the face of the unforeseeable end
[vor dem unabsehlichen Ende zu leben erschrecken]. (VA-Friedländer 25:615)
Even though the existence of a human being is good “in and for itself,”
(VA-Friedländer 25:619), dying “as now happens” would be preferable to
living on indefinitely if one did not have the “hope” to which a “steadfast”
adherence to rational principles lends support (VA-Friedländer 25:624; cf.
KpV 5:123).
It is thus only through “good will” (or, alternatively, “good character”)
that a human being becomes “good in himself.” To achieve that state,
however, “concepts” (like that of good and evil, justice and injustice) “must
become incentives.” To be sure, as the transcripts immediately continue,
“concepts” are not “incentives,” since “objects of understanding” differ from
“objects of feeling” (for the same reason, one surmises, that that the faculty
of “cognition” differs from that of “feeling pleasure and displeasure”).
Accordingly, we “lack insight” into how “concepts can arouse feelings” (VA-
Friedländer 25:649); still “it happens” (es geschicht doch) (VA-Friedländer
25:650).
Whence, then, the might (Macht) by which human beings can resolve
to act according to principles? Kant offers the following suggestion:
The incentive to act in accordance with good principles could well be the
idea that if all were to act this way, this earth would be a paradise. This
drives me to contribute something to this effect, and if it doesn’t happen
(geschicht), at least this doesn’t lie with me. I am, for my part, still a member
of this paradise. (VA-Friedländer 25:650)
To the extent that the failure doesn’t lie with me, I already belong in such
an ideal world. But that morally consoling thought does not satisfy the
reflective human being’s demand to see where we are actually headed.
4. “World history” (Welthistorie) as the “history of humanity”

(Geschichte der Menschheit)
Kant had earlier called for a “world history” that has yet to be written, one
that would supply the anthropological knowledge absent which “morality
and religion” cannot attain “their final purpose”: “In order for morality
and religion to obtain their final purpose [Entszweck] knowledge of the
human being must be combined with them . . . No one has yet written a
world history [Welthistorie] that was at the same time a history of humanity
[Geschichte der Menschheit]” (VA-Friedländer 25:472).15 With such world
15 In subsequent versions of the Anthropology, Kant will title Part Two “Characteristik.” In the pub-
lished Anthropology he defines “the character of a living being” as that which “allows its determination
[Bestimmung] to be cognized in advance” (A 7:329).
Table 9.1. Arrangement of Faculties in Anthropologie Friedländer.
Principium of life (nature) Principium of activity (freedom)
(body) (Gemüth {1}) Gemüth {2}

constitution aptitude heart
complexion talent character (principium of free action
from principles)
temperament (1) temperament (2)
history in mind, Kant turns, in Part Two, from empirical psychology (whose
conventional divisions, according to Baumgarten’s text, Kant had loosely
followed in Part One) to “anthropology” as such, which he here describes
as knowledge of the rules governing the “phenomena” of human beings,
with a view to making “use” of them (VA-Friedländer 25:624). Kant orders
those phenomena roughly as follows in Table 9.1.16
Both body and Gemüth are animated by the “principium of life” or
“nature” simply. But Gemüth also gives expression to the “principium
of activity” or “freedom.” (Temperament also swings both ways, making
“physiognomy,” at this moment of Kant’s thinking, an especially important
subject of anthropological study.) Accordingly, Gemüth is (partially) subject
to “approval” and “disapproval.” We are responsible not for what nature
furnishes (i.e. aptitude, talent, and temperament (version 1)), but for the
“use” we make of it, and, in particular, for whether that use is determined by
(in ascending order of praiseworthiness) (1) a good Gemüth (version 2), or
readiness in learning from others; (2) a good heart, or activity that originates
in sensibility but contingently accords with fundamental principles; or
(3) good character, or activity that necessarily accords with fundamental
principles (VA-Friedländer 25:628–9).
Character, or the “the employment of our power of choice to act accord-
ing to rules and principles,” is the “principium of free actions from prin-
ciples,” and constitutes the “value of a human being in and for itself ”
(VA-Friedländer 25:630; 649). Character is “erected from concepts,” and
it can compensate, given sufficient strength of will, for (other) failings
of Gemüth and heart (as in the famous case of Socrates, who acquired
good character despite such failings) (VA-Friedländer 25:253). At the same
time, not everyone possesses the “germ” (Keim) necessary to be able to
acquire a character, a germ specifically lacking, as Kant here claims, in all
“oriental nations,” who “represent [things] to [them]selves” through “shape
16 Baumgarten (1757), Metaphysica, pars iii (“Psychologia”), reprinted (Ref 15:3–54).
[Gestalt] and intuition,” but are “incapable of what a concept requires” (VA-
Friedländer 25:651). As a result, no “oriental nation” is “in a position to
explain a single property of morality or of justice through concepts.” Nor,
indeed, is any capable of philosophy, mathematics, or any other conceptual
“insight” (VA-Friedländer 25:655). Both “taste” and a true “love of honor”
are similarly beyond them (VA-Friedländer 25:556).
Such principles include moral “laws,” which hold without exception
(VA-Friedländer 25:633). At the same time, to be rule-ridden – i.e. to
seize on maxims and apply them unbendingly – is the mark of a mere
“pedant”17 (VA-Friedländer 25:539, 635). Discerning what Kant earlier called
the “spirit” of the law requires, then, not only understanding but a certain
“maturity of judgment,” a maturity not acquired before the age of forty –
an age when one is also capable of choosing a wife wisely, i.e. of avoiding
both the impetuosity of youth (which becomes fixed on a woman’s physical
shape) and the miserliness of old age (which thinks only of her money) (cf.
VA-Friedländer 25:633, 654, 683).18
In sum: good character involves a harmony of sensibility and under-
standing that resembles the organic harmony that accompanies the state of
physical maturity.19 At the same time freedom, which Kant here calls “the
greatest life of the human being,” boosts the principle of life to the highest
possible pitch (VA-Friedländer 25:560).
Though he distinguishes between good character and its outward signs
(whose discernment falls to “physiognomy”), Kant also insists that one can
recognize one’s own (good) character through inner sense. He does not
distinguish, as in his later moral writings, between the merely “empirical”
character that is available to us (through both inner and outer signs) and
the “intelligible” or noumenal character that, according to his later view, is
necessarily hidden from us (see Cohen (2008)).
As for bad character (as distinguished from none at all), the main cause
is a lack of discipline (VA-Friedländer 25:653) – i.e. “the constraint of
inclination through rules” (VA-Friedländer 25:651) – a deficiency for which
civil order (bürgerlichen Ordnung) is the primary remedy (VA-Friedländer
17 On women’s peculiar suitability for remedying this defect, see VA-Friedländer 25:707.
18 In the published Anthropology, Kant adds a second crucial age – around sixty – which he there
identifies as the age at which “wisdom” is acquired (A 7:201). (Not altogether coincidentally,
perhaps, Kant was sixty when he published the Groundwork, in which the principle of autonomy,
along with “Achtung for the law” as a rational incentive of the will, rather than as a matter of merely
outward honor, appears for the first time.) On Kant’s treatment of “respect for the law” in the earlier
Remarks, see Clewis (2009), 53–5.
19 Character is, as he says, the main thing in a human being “that everything runs toward” (VA-
25:684). There is a crucial difference among European nations, however,
between those that can be disciplined only through force (Gewalt), and
those that can be disciplined through “respect [Achtung] for universal law,”
or “law,” as the text also puts it, “that agrees [stimmt] with every freedom”:
When human beings have the faculty of being capable of being disciplined
through law and not through force, this already indicates a sublime talent.
This is what is noble in civil order, that when there is a law, all respect it.
From civil order there arises, in turn:
Regularity, order, reciprocal determination of one member by the others and
thus a whole of humanity . . . [and with it] the development of talents, the
concept of right and of morality, and the . . . greatest perfection of which a
people is capable. (VA-Friedländer 25:680)
But Kant is not yet done. In order to perfect his “humanity,” man must, it
seems, do violence to his “animality,” owing to the gap that separates man’s
“natural” from his “civic” maturity – that is to say, the age at which he can
reproduce his kind and the age at which he can marry and support a family
(VA-Friedländer 25:682–3). The disorders of the civilized condition arise,
as Émile had shown, from the transformation of a sexual desire that is easy
to satisfy in a state of natural “simplicity” into a demand for preference
over others that is insatiable in principle (cf. A 7:325):20
One has accordingly believed that Rousseau preferred the natural to the
artificial human being, and his opinion seems really to have inclined toward
this side. But on the other side, it serves to arouse the attention of the
philosopher to investigate how the perfections of the civil condition should
be formed [gebildet] so that the perfections of nature are not destroyed, and
nature is done no violence. (VA-Friedländer 25:684)
The negative happiness of nature consists in the absence of misery and vice;
but it lacks the positive element that requires virtue (VA-Friedländer 25:685)
and, with it, a concept of the law (VA-Friedländer 25:688). Accordingly, the
human being is “actually determined” not merely to seek his own private
happiness but “to make himself completely happy and good as a member
of society” or of “the whole” (VA-Friedländer 25:690).
A “survey of the entire plan of politics and education” reveals, moreover,
how such a state might actually arise (VA-Friedländer 25:689, 691) – on the
one hand, through the “proper education” of “teachers and priests” so that
20 Rousseau (1969), 493, 496; cf. Bem 20:24, 57, 132.

“pure moral concepts” might prevail among them and eventually reach “the
schools of rulers.” And yet inasmuch as “the constraint of authorities reaches
no further than the external civil order,” it supports merely an “outward
propriety,” by which humanity will have “lost more than we have gained”
(as Rousseau had seemingly feared) (VA-Friedländer 25:691). To be sure,
the habit of propriety gives rise to Achtung for the law, as men find honor
in good conduct, in which “each fears the moral judgment of others.” Still,
Achtung for the law, which (here) rests merely on the opinion of others, is
not enough to bring about “the kingdom of God on earth,” which requires
“the inward constraint of conscience,” or true character (VA-Friedländer
25:692–3). Since in nature “everything is designed to achieve its greatest
possible perfection,” the germ for the perfection of our humanity must
likewise be present, just as a “man grows from an embryo” (VA-Friedländer
25:694). Kant here ventures the faint suggestion that those human beings in
whom the moral germ is presently lacking might someday be “transposed”
to a condition (perhaps on some other planet?) in which they too might
achieve their full human perfection. To limit our horizon to the present,
to assume things must remain as they are now, is to be guilty of a “lazy
philosophy.” Instead,
The philosopher must make his concepts known, and present [vortragen]
them for closer consideration. Teachers must form character, so that rulers
might have insight into this and manage to bring it about. In this way such
a condition would exist that we have no hope of living [to see] [erleben
haben]. This condition cannot be destroyed, but will last as long as it pleases
God to maintain our earthly body . . . Nature will always suffice until such
a paradise on earth arises. (VA-Friedländer 25:695)
Like the earth itself, on which day and night are gradually becoming
more equal, the human race is slowly overcoming the physical limita-
tions to which climactic extremes formerly gave rise. Such a consideration
(Betrachtung) not only is “very agreeable,” because it “is an idea that is
possible” (VA-Friedländer 25:696). It also answers directly to the “misolo-
gist’s” demand that reason enable us to “look toward the goal and end of all
things,” by situating that demand pragmatically, or with a view to human
use (VA-Friedländer 25:655).
But this projection of human reason’s (this-)worldly “limits” still does
not exhaust Kant’s task. Two issues still remain: both the gap between our
natural and civil maturity, and the weakness and (apparent) imperfection
of the female sex. Indeed, it is in regard to that apparent imperfection that
a philosophically informed anthropology and human “interest” intersect
most closely, providing “tests” of “how the human being is to be studied”
(VA-Friedländer 25:697; cf. Rousseau (1969), 700).
Following Rousseau, Kant argues that female nature can only be fully
observed under conditions of refinement, in which certain dispositions
of her nature compensating for her weakness have been able to develop
(VA-Friedländer 25:700). Among these is a natural artfulness in ruling men
without (external) compulsion (cf. Rousseau (1969), 695–6):
The greatest union of society and the most perfect state of society must hap-
pen without compulsion. This, however, only occurs through inclination,
and hence through women . . . True, by means of compulsion the civil order
produces a civil society, yet a perfect inner unity should be established, and
to this inner union, which happens without constraint, woman contributes
everything [trägt das Frauenzimmer alles bei]. (VA-Friedländer 25:701)
In the perfected domestic union at which “nature aims,” the woman dom-
inates (herren) through inclination, while the man rules (regieren) through
understanding, the one according to mood (Laune), the other in accor-
dance with law (Gesetz) (VA-Friedländer 25:717–18).21 Without such mov-
ing forces of “action and reaction,” human beings would “fuse together”
into “lifeless” inactivity and quiet (VA-Friedländer 25:719). That women
are not capable of “principles,” but aim only to maintain the household,
is thus no matter for reproach (VA-Friedländer 25:720). And it may help
counter a certain rule-bound “pendantry” in matters of domestic economy,
to which men especially are prone (VA-Friedländer 25:469, 338, 635).22
In sum: natural misanthropy, misogyny, and misology (the three per-
versions of “reflection” that Kant had earlier specifically compared) are
here answered in a single stroke, accomplishing via the history of human-
ity a reconciliation similar to the “harmony” of soul and body to which
“personality” leads individuals (cf. Rousseau (1969), 778).
Indeed, as a brief final section on “education” makes clear, it is only
through such “insight” into “the order of nature,” revealing traces of “God’s
will and law” (VA-Friedländer 25:728), that moral and religious education
(about whose ineffectiveness Kant had earlier complained (VA-Friedländer
25:471–2)) has hope of ultimate success. World history of the sort Kant has
in mind thus becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy – a case of foresight,
as distinguished from mere “reverie,” in which Gemüth and understanding
perfectly co-operate (cf. VA-Friedländer 25:531–5).
21 For Rousseau, wives are the “ministers,” husbands the “monarchs” (Rousseau (1969), 766).
22 Kant cites the humorous example of a scholar who, informed that the house was on fire, replied
that that was his wife’s business.
5. Postscript: Count Verri (and beyond)

A subsequent letter to Hertz, dated November 1776, begins with an apology
for Kant’s long personal and public silence, including the delayed appear-
ance of Kant’s long-promised major philosophic study. Kant describes the
latter, which now includes a “critique, discipline, canon, and architectonic
of pure reason,” as a “major object” that obstructs his other projects “like a
dam,” but that that he now believes to have in his possession but for a few
“final obstacles” (C 10:199, original emphasis).
If his earlier letter to Hertz had emphasized the intimate connection
between speculative and empirical knowledge, this one urges the impor-
tance, in attempting to survey the whole field of pure reason, of leaving
everything empirical behind. And if the earlier letter had expressed high
hopes for the new field of anthropology, he now apologizes for a certain
“faithlessness” in having turned away from the technically demanding task
at hand to topics he found more enjoyable.
That change in focus is reflected in his subsequent course on anthropol-
ogy (the Pillau Lectures, delivered the winter semester of 1777–8) which
now describes the very “concept of human nature” as a “problem” with
“many difficulties” for which “education” no longer furnishes an at least
approximate solution (as was seemingly the case in Friedländer) (VA-Pillau
25:839):
Character of the Human Species or the concept of human nature in gen-
eral. There are many difficulties with this problem. For the appearances in
different ages do not show how the human being is constituted, but only
how he will be constituted at the time and under these circumstances. They
do not allow us to cognize what kinds of germs lie hidden in the soul of the
human being. – The predispositions for morality that lie in human nature
are discovered by us through education [Erziehung], but we cannot know
whether a far better education might be thought up. (VA-Pillau 25:838)
Nature and freedom now stand in opposition without apparent means
of reconciliation (VA-Pillau 25:733). And history no longer culminates
in a potential “paradise on earth,” but remains open-ended, with a new
emphasis on the role of invention and discovery (almost entirely eclipsing
the relation of the sexes, his discussion of which is now perfunctory), from
agriculture and writing to Rousseau’s essay on inequality. Kant now speaks
of Geist (or, alternatively, of “spontaneity”) as giving “unity to all faculties”
through a “principium of rules, of manifoldness in the whole, and of the
new.” His earlier confident insistence on the “unity of life” has disappeared,
apparently for good.
One suspects that these new trends were partly abetted by Kant’s reading
of Pietro Verri, whose theories of pain and pleasure are approvingly cited
both here and in all subsequent versions of the Anthropology, including the
one he finally published in 1798/1800.
Feeling of pleasure and displeasure. This is a very important and indispens-
able matter, not only because it contains the principles of human passions,
but also the maxims that teach against them, and besides, a book has just
come out by an Italian, which treats this matter . . . There have been many
(including this) Italian author . . . who have said that it is impossible to
determine gratification and have insight into it. But we are defining it thus:
Gratification is the feeling of the promotion of life. Not that the feeling of
life is a gratification; we feel also through pain that we are living, and even
far more. (VA-Pillau 25:785)
Verri’s Discourse on Pleasure and Pain, which appeared in German transla-
tion in 1777, conclusively established, in Kant’s considered opinion, that
living involves more pain than pleasure, and that “equanimity,” as he had
earlier conceived it, falls outside the limits of the humanly possible (cf.
A 7:231).23 If so, Kant’s related rethinking of the relation between organic
and moral “life” may have helped him overcome one of the final critical
“obstacles” obstructing the emergence of “transcendental idealism” in its
final critical form.
23 For a fuller discussion, see Shell (2009).
cha pter 10
Indispensable education of the being of

reason and speech
G. Felicitas Munzel
Instruction in universities is properly this, to cultivate the capacity of

reason, and to get [students] into the habit of the method of ratioci-
nating, and to establish the appropriate maxims of reason. Thereby
one . . . practices using reason.
[The use of reason] does not come of itself like that of the feet, from
frequent exercise, especially when it concerns attributes which cannot
be so directly exhibited in common experience.
(KpV 5:162–3)
Reason must first be practiced in being subject to its own law.

(D 8:145)
With regard to the schooling of reason and of character, what must

be attended to is that the child cognize everything based on reasons
and that it act from principles.
[The two sciences of practical philosophy and anthropology] cannot

subsist as one without the other, [for] . . . one must know human
beings in order to know whether they are capable of performing all
that is demanded of them. The consideration of a rule is useless, if
one cannot make people prepared to fulfill it.
(VMo-Mrongovius, 27.2.2:1398)
Morality must be combined with knowledge of humanity.

Morality requires anthropology for its application to human beings.

(G 4:412)
These seemingly random citations from Kant’s writings spanning the years
from 1775–6 to 1788 reflect a sustained set of concerns and connections
172
Indispensable education of the being of reason and speech 173
which continue into his critical philosophy, but which scholars often find
difficult to reconcile: (1) Kant’s account of practical reason and a call
for the education or cultivation of reason; (2) the relation of rationally
based moral principles and the empirical science of anthropology. For
Kant’s students, the latter relation was highlighted in the very way his
lectures were scheduled. Each of his fourteen lectures on morality were
always given in conjunction with his lectures on anthropology, in the
same semester. As Werner Stark puts it, in its presentation, there was “no
morality without anthropology” and, in the decade of the 1770s, it was
equally the case that there was “no anthropology without morality” (Stark
(1997), 7).1 The student manuscripts indicate that Kant necessarily had
to count on students taking both lectures in the same semester and had
to take care that the respective lectures did not contradict one another.
The challenge, then, is to recover these relations – morality, the school-
ing of reason, and the science of anthropology – for the contemporary
reader.
Recognition of the early expression of these themes and of their reoccur-
rence in the critical period of Kant’s writings lends importance to giving an
analysis of their appearance in Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology. In this essay
I will focus on three sections in the Anthropologie Friedländer: “On the Use
of Reason with Regard to the Practical,” “On the Character of Humanity
in General,” and “On Education.” One finds that ultimately the education
or cultivation of reason is intrinsic to the very realization or nature of the
being of reason and speech (as Kant here distinguishes human beings from
other animal species). In order to understand this one needs to get a clear
understanding of the sense of “reason” and, in particular, of the sense of
the “use” of reason that is operative in Kant’s account. The inquiry (into
the nature of this being and its faculty of reason) is central to the anthro-
pological investigation and so one needs also to understand the nature of
this science as Kant conceives of it. Toward these ends, the analysis in this
chapter will proceed in three parts: the science of anthropology and its
subject of inquiry, the sense of reason and its use (as well as its misuses)
that are at stake in the discussion, and the resulting need and challenges
for education.
1 In his paper Stark expands on this point. Basing his conclusion also on Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz
at the end of 1773 (depending on the edition, x, ¶71, 136–9, or ¶79, 144 ff.), Stark claims that Kant
here is already explicit about the fact that “a change in his lectures on morality is connected with the
establishment of his lectures on anthropology”; that it is clear both that “morality and anthropology
must be separated” and that “at the same time neither can be considered independent of the other”
(Stark (1997), 6–8).
174 G. Felicitas Munzel
1. The science of anthropology and its subject of inquiry

Already this early Kant speaks of – indeed underscores – that his sense
of the science of anthropology entails an “idea,” an idea which “all
anthropologies” to date “have not yet had” (VA-Friedländer 25:472). The
lectures begin with a twofold sense of the notion of “world”: “nature” or
“the world as an object of outer sense,” and the “human being” or “the
world as an object of inner sense” (VA-Friedländer 25:469). This division
in turn entails a twofold knowledge, “physics” (as “knowledge of the object
of outer sense”) and anthropology (the “knowledge of human beings as the
object of inner sense”), as well as “twofold relations” into which “human
beings can enter” and for which they require these two respective fields of
study (VA-Friedländer 25:473, 469). Anthropology is not a matter of the
study of human affairs; one does not acquire this knowledge by travel-
ing the world. Rather it concerns itself with the “nature of humanity,” a
nature which, unlike the conduct, particular properties, or human states of
affairs, does not change (VA-Friedländer 25:471). “Anthropology is thus a
pragmatic knowledge of what results from our nature, but it is not a phys-
ical or geographical knowledge, for that is bound to time and place, and
is not constant” (VA-Friedländer 25:471). It is “not a description of human
beings,” but it is a “knowledge of humanity” that is “at the same time my
knowledge” (VA-Friedländer 25:471). Its purpose is to bring the “phenom-
ena” of “human beings and their conduct” “under rules” (VA-Friedländer
25:472). These “pragmatic doctrines” are “doctrines of prudence,” for the
“subject,” the “human being,” must be studied in order to ascertain whether
“he can even fulfill what we require that he ought to do” (a statement that
echoes what Kant says also in his lectures on morality) (VA-Friedländer
25:471). It is here in the text that Kant next observes that “morality must
be combined with the knowledge of humanity,” an observation that he
also repeats in his critical writings (VA-Friedländer 25:472). Effectively,
then, the idea of anthropology that Kant has in mind is the “science” of
“prudence” that is the necessary counterpart to the science of morality
(VA-Friedländer 25:471). As the study of inner sense, this prudence is not
a matter of an inquiry into physical powers, external relations, material
resources, or anything else that belongs to the highly variable “fortuitous
behavior” of human beings. It is a question of the inner capabilities inher-
ent to and definitive of human nature per se. Its etymological roots (that
relate it to foresight or providential care) do indeed connect prudence with
the question of sound judgment in practical affairs, or, as Kant refers to
it throughout the text, with “skill.” Such “skills” to “make proper use of
everything” require “secure principles in terms of which we can proceed”
(VA-Friedländer 25:471). The ultimate “purpose” is the “complete perfec-
tion of human beings,” and so it is clear that however definitive of human
nature the capabilities at issue are, development is required to realize their
full potential (VA-Friedländer 25:681). To gain further insight into the capa-
bilities and skills in question, we turn next to Kant’s account of humanity
in these lectures.
In the section “On the Character of Humanity in General” Kant explic-
itly from the outset aligns his discussion with Rousseau’s distinction of the
savage and civilized states. The “human being,” writes Kant, “has two deter-
minations, one with regard to humanity, and one with regard to animality”
(VA-Friedländer 25:682). Again, consonant with Rousseau’s account, Kant
sees these two determinations in conflict with one another: “if we want
to achieve the perfection of humanity, then we must do violence to the
determination of animality” (VA-Friedländer 25:682).2 However, “nature’s
purpose” to “preserve the species” means that both determinations must
still be able to be maintained. It must be possible for the human being to
“cultivate his reason” and at the same time, “as an animal, he thus would
have to be built in such a way that it could also stand him in good stead if
he would cultivate his reason” (VA-Friedländer 25:677). In the savage state,
the human animal has “no use of reason” (VA-Friedländer 25:675). The
determination to humanity depends upon the cultivation of reason and
speech and, in turn (with reference to a treatise by Peter Moscati which
Kant reviewed very favorably in 1771), the “cultivation of the germ of reason
laid in our nature . . . destines us for society” (VA-Friedländer 25:675). Kant
has many interesting things to say about the human being as an animal
and about the transition from the savage to the civilized state, but for our
2 Kant repeats this observation elsewhere, including his 1786 essay “Conjectural Beginning of Human
History.” Here he reads Rousseau’s version of the problem as a variation of the discrepancy he has
himself noted between nature’s intentions for the human species and the effect of the process for
the individual (so, between the universal humanity and individual particularities always both actual
in the living being). With that Kant acknowledges the peculiar pedagogical problematic. “In his
essays on the arts and sciences and on inequality,” Kant writes, Rousseau “quite rightly shows the
unavoidable conflict of culture [or cultivation, Kultur] with the nature of the human being as a
physical species in which every individual is wholly to attain his vocation [Bestimmung]. However, in
his Émile, his Social Contract, and other writings, he tries again to solve the more difficult problem:
how cultivation must proceed so that the aptitudes of humanity as a moral species are developed as
is proper to its vocation [Bestimmung], but also in such a way that these no longer conflict with its
aptitudes as a natural species.” Since “cultivation in accordance with true principles of education”
serving to develop both the “human being and the citizen” has in all likelihood not yet been initiated,
much less completed, this conflict, observes Kant, has given rise to all the “real ills which oppress
human life and all the vices which dishonor it” (MA 8:116).
purposes here we will focus in the remainder of this chapter on what he
has to say about the being of reason and speech.
At the outset of the lectures Kant identifies the “essential difference of
the human being from all animals” as consisting in the “representation
of I and the power to grasp the thought”; “no thought but the thought
of the I,” he writes, “lies at the basis of other thoughts.” Further, “this is
the personality to be conscious of oneself ” (VA-Friedländer 25:473). Such
nascent identification of elements of inner sense and reason that continue
into the critical writings is found also in the section “On the Use of
Reason with Regard to the Practical.” Here Kant begins with the distinction
of the understanding (“required for experience and for the assessment
of appearances”) and reason (which “judges a priori before experience”)
(VA-Friedländer 25:545). The power of reason at issue is not a matter of
calculative, comparative, or relational functions as one sees (for example)
in a Humean empiricist account. Rather it is a question of ratiocination,
an elevation of reason beyond the limits of experience (VA-Friedländer
25:546). In this regard (as we will explore in the next section) we can either
avoid using reason altogether (that is, not engage in ratiocination), we
can use it well (based on an identification and examination of its guiding
principles), we can misuse it, or we can fall into a state of misology (when
we get frustrated with failure to find the answers we are seeking). Reason
in this sense is a “faculty of cognition from concepts” and so, in turn, it is
the proper basis for morality since pure morality “must be cognized from
concepts” (VA-Friedländer 25:552).
The definition of all aspects of human nature with reference to reason
and thereby bringing human nature and human interest under the umbrella
of the human moral vocation is familiar to us from the course of Kant’s
writings through the critical period. Reading the anthropology alongside
the moral writings allows one to see the continuity and development of this
account of human nature. As examples, the following two passages from
the Critique of Practical Reason give us the critical expression of the dual
animal and human natures of the human being and their relation from the
standpoint of reason:
Man is a being of needs, so far as he belongs to the world of sense, and to
this extent his reason certainly has an inescapable responsibility from the
side of his sensuous nature to attend to its interest and to form practical
maxims with a view to the happiness of this and, where possible, of a future
life. But still he is not so completely animal as to be indifferent to everything
reason says on its own . . . He needs reason, to consider at all times his weal
and woe. But he has reason for a yet higher purpose, namely to consider
also what is in itself good or evil, which pure and sensuously disinterested
reason alone can judge, and furthermore, to distinguish this estimation from
a sensuous estimation and to make the former the supreme condition of the
latter. (KpV 5:61–2)
The origin of duty lies in

personality, the freedom and independence from the mechanism of nature
regarded as a capacity of a being subject to special laws (pure practical laws
given by its own reason), so that the person belonging to the world of sense
is subject to his own personality so far as he belongs to the intelligible world.
For it is then not to be wondered at that man, as belonging to two worlds,
must regard his own being in relation to his second and higher vocation
(Bestimmung) with reverence, and the laws of this vocation with the deepest
respect. (KpV 5:86–7)
The inclusion of the notion of “personality” here adumbrates the three-

part division that Kant makes explicit in his Religion within the Bound-
aries of Mere Reason. In this text, the specific hallmark of human nature
is sharpened to the rational capacities of setting purposes and making
choices (Wille and Willkür) (R 6:28). Indeed here we are to understand
by “human nature only the subjective ground of the employment of free-
dom as such,” which is the “first basis of the adoption” of maxims, a basis
found in our capacity of choice (R 6:21); our resulting state of being is an
“effect [Wirkung] of a free power of choice” (R 6:44). In this text Kant
describes the “entire determination of the human being,” or entire set
of purposes making up the whole purpose of human existence, as a three-
part hierarchy under the rubric of the “original aptitude for good in human
nature”: our aptitudes (Anlagen) as (1) living, animal beings (our animality),
(2) living, rational beings (our humanity), and (3) rational, morally account-
able beings (our personality) (R 6:26). Several passages later, he further
qualifies these “elements”: “we are here speaking only of those aptitudes
that relate immediately to the capacity of desire and the exercise of the
power of choice” (R 6:28).
As we know from Kant’s other writings, for example the familiar open-
ing passages of his essay on enlightenment, while genuine choice-making
requires thinking for oneself, consciously bringing the appropriate prin-
ciples to bear on one’s judgments, it is easy to be lazy, to be, in a word,
immature, to follow unreflectively the advice of the touted expert in a
given field, and so to be subject to prejudice (unexamined opinion) (WA
8:33). It is, then, ultimately a question of attaining maturity in one’s use of
reason, a use whose full scope is the “world” understood as the “sum total of
all relations into which human beings may enter” (VA-Friedländer 25:469).
As I have argued in Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy. Toward Education for
Freedom, the critical account of these relations is the spheres of the relation
of the human mind to the world – theoretical, practical (moral), aesthetic,
teleological, and virtuous (ethical) (Munzel (2012), Chapter 4). In the con-
cluding Methodenlehren (Doctrines of Method or Ways of Instruction), of
each of the critical writings Kant summarizes the guiding principles for
the proper use of reason in each of these spheres, principles that teachers,
those who would “pave the path to wisdom which everyone should follow
and keep others from going astray,” must Socratically guide students to
become cognizant of and to adopt in their judgments (KpV 5:163). In his
published Anthropology, Kant describes wisdom as the “idea of perfection
in the practical use of reason, a use in accordance with law,” which “cannot
in the least degree be infused by another; each must give rise to it from
within themselves” (A 7:200).
In sum, the growth and development of the human being is a process
involving a transition from living at the level of one’s animal nature to
realizing one’s human nature as a being of reason and speech and ultimately
as a moral being. Inherent to this process is the requirement of education,
specifically the cultivation of reason, Kultur der Vernunft.3 As we saw in
our opening quote, already in his 1775–6 Friedländer anthropology lectures,
Kant observes that “instruction in universities is properly this, to cultivate
the capacity of reason, and to get [students] into the habit of the method of
ratiocinating, and to establish the appropriate maxims of reason. Thereby
one . . . practices using reason” (VA-Friedländer 25:547).
We now return to this text for the issues in the use and cultivation of
reason that Kant identifies at this early stage.
2. Lack, use, and misuse of reason

Consonant with the goal of “animating reason” and “producing ratiocinat-
ing human beings,” the sense of reason at issue entails cognizing “something
3 Kultur (culture or cultivation) is the term Kant uses to speak explicitly of the educative process of
reason; indeed, Kant played a contributing role in its adoption and meaning in the language. His
own first use of it comes together with Bildung in his 1765–6 “Announcement” of his lectures. The
context is his claim that the logic text chosen for the lectures lends itself to the study of both “the
Bildung of the active and sound, albeit common, understanding” and “the Kultur of the more refined
and learned reason” (N 2:311). His next use of Kultur comes in the Critique of Pure Reason, the work
that presents the critical philosophy as indispensable for the cultivation of reason. For a detailed
discussion see Munzel (2012), 70–81. See also Munzel (1999), Chapter 5 and 281–5, for concept of
Kultur.
due to universal bases and principles”; the “faculty of excerpting something
from universal bases” allows one to “elevate one’s reason beyond the limits
of practical use” (with “practical” here aligned with the realm of experience)
(VA-Friedländer 25:546). In order to realize this elevation one must get “the
capacity of reason into the habit of judging about all universal principles”
(VA-Friedländer 25:547). The instruction which thus cultivates the capacity
of reason does not turn students into scholars; rather, in becoming practiced
in using reason, they become accustomed to “reflect about everything, what
bases this or that has” and thereby are enabled to use their “reason in the
world” and eventually “acquire insights” for themselves (VA-Friedländer
25:547). Such instruction serves also to “remedy carelessness” in the use
of reason (which Kant notes may appear as if it were a lack of reason)
(VA-Friedländer 25:546–7). The inquiry into “the causes and bases of an
event” seemingly has to do precisely with the world of experience, but what
one sees in these lectures is a foreshadowing of what becomes key to Kant’s
critical distinction: cognition starting with experience but not therefore
arising from experience (KrV A1/B1). Thus establishing the “appropriate
maxims of reason” (as he calls them in the anthropology lectures) whereby
judgment proceeds is central.
The opposite is not to engage in such judging at all. The avoidance of
the use of reason takes a number of forms. In the first place “emulation”
or “imitation” constitutes the very “ruin of reason” (and so we have here
a clear adumbration of the fundamental maxim of thinking for oneself )
(VA-Friedländer 25:547). Those who find the use of reason difficult are
more than happy to appeal to “universally accepted opinion and thereby
give up the use of reason” (VA-Friedländer 25:547). There are consequences
for civilized life. Rulers find it to be to their advantage to “deprive people
of the use of reason” by making them “superstitious and shackling them
to prejudices” (VA-Friedländer 25:546). One way they seek to achieve this,
writes Kant, is to “prohibit the printing press, for its freedom is a means
of animating reason, of cultivating knowledge, and therefore of produc-
ing ratiocinating human beings” (VA-Friedländer 25:546). However, Kant
goes on, reason rebels “against illegitimate compulsion; it wants grounds”;
moreover, such a government is ultimately “very weak” since the “more
ignorant and stupid the people are, all the more obstinate they also are”
(VA-Friedländer 25:546). Those who do gladly give up the use of reason
tend to appeal to “fate” (or “blind necessity”) and “fortune” (or “blind
chance”); in this scenario wonders, birthmarks, meanings of dreams, the
divining rod, and the influences of the heavens, of the moon, and of
magnetic forces become the sorts of things to which the causes of events
are attributed (VA-Friedländer 25:547–8). In the critical philosophy, Kant
will spell out the consequences for the enterprise of philosophy itself. He
asserts that the skeptical effort to “withdraw” from the “tedious business
of reason” is self-deceiving; it only “seems to be, as it were, the short path
to a permanent philosophical tranquility, or at least the main road favored
by those who think that by scoffingly despising all investigations of this
kind they can give themselves philosophical airs” (KrV A757/B785). He
delineates two fundamental mistakes, that of a perverse reason (perversa
ratio – which hypostatizes purposive unity in nature and forces anthro-
pomorphized concepts on it) and that of a lazy reason (ignava ratio –
which effectively exempts itself from the investigation of nature altogether
by appealing to the “inscrutable decree of supreme wisdom,” instead of
proceeding to seek out causes by following a “regulative principle of the
systematic unity of a teleological connection”) (KrV A690–4/B718–22).4
So seen, the problem of establishing and appropriately using the guiding
principles for the judgment of reason in all relations to the world in which
human beings find themselves is clearly identified in the anthropology
lectures; the articulation of the appropriate principles and their use is the
ongoing work of the critical philosophy.
Other distinctions found in the Friedländer anthropology lectures
include those between sound and speculative reason and between rea-
son and the understanding. Initially Kant says that to ratiocinate is to use
reason speculatively (which is its use beyond the limits of experience, for
which it has “rules”), but then he distinguishes also reason’s “correct use”
that can be “confirmed by experience”; the latter is “sound reason” and its
“maxim” is
as follows: not to accept as valid any rule in its use than this, [the one]
whereby the most universal use of reason is possible, and whereby its use is
facilitated. Every nature maintains itself; hence reason also maintains itself,
if it does not admit any other rule than such whereby its use is possible.
(VA-Friedländer 25:548–50)
So the appeals to fate, fortune, wonders, and spirits carrying “on their play
in this world” – appeals that all entail the cessation of the use of reason –
are rejected by sound reason (VA-Friedländer 25:549). The rejection of
such appeals is “not a theoretical proposition, but a maxim of reason”
(VA-Friedländer 25:549). “Through its maxims, sound reason directs our
4 For a more detailed discussion of Kant’s critical examination of these issues in the use of reason
see Munzel (2012), Chapter 4, especially 238–47, for a discussion of these errors and the skeptical
withdrawal.
judgments” (VA-Friedländer 25:550). While in its quest for self-preservation
reason “does not permit that whereby its use is nullified,” Kant finds the
“lack of reason” to be “nothing unusual” (VA-Friedländer 25:549, 553). To
overcome this lack is central to the understanding of enlightenment as a
pedagogical enterprise.
Kant further points to a danger for “thoughtful persons, who conduct
investigations into their future vocation and chief purposes,” and ultimately
“gain insight” into their “ignorance”; they find that they “cannot foresee
the goal and end of all things” and end up resorting to misology. They do
value reason, but renounce it because it has failed them (VA-Friedländer
25:553). For the reader of Kant’s critical philosophy, the opening lines of
the Critique of Pure Reason come quickly to mind. This “peculiar fate” of
reason to pursue questions it cannot adequately answer is the very point
of departure for the critical investigation. In the Friedländer Lectures Kant
does immediately observe that for the individual who has “gotten into the
habit of making use of reason” it “is futile to free oneself from it; who already
has a propensity thereto, reflects all his life” (VA-Friedländer 25:553). Again,
in the A Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant acknowledges that
the state of the metaphysical questions has lapsed into an understandable
“weariness,” but continues to affirm that a permanent disengagement is not
an option:to carry this to an attitude of “indifferentism” is to invoke the
“mother of chaos and night,” he writes, since “it is futile to feign indifference
concerning inquiries whose object cannot be indifferent to human nature”
(KrV Ax, original emphasis).
Over and above the issues of the lack of the use of reason (prejudice) and,
at the other end of the spectrum, the frustration that can lead to misology,
Kant also catalogs a malfunctioning of the powers of the mind that ranges
from indisposition, to sickness, to infirmity. Occasion and circumstances
(for example, degree of fatigue, difficult work, agreeable company, activities
and distractions of life) result in the “disposition of the mind” being “very
variable from one day to another, indeed from one hour to another,” and
so impact how well or not one is disposed for “deep reflection” (VA-
Friedländer 25:553–4). Sicknesses too can be remedied (just as they can in
the case of sicknesses in the body). In the case of the mind, Kant identifies
a twofold sickness: weakness (which can be brought about by something
like much grief ), or a disturbance of the powers of the mind (which can be
brought about by a high fever) (VA-Friedländer 25:554). Infirmity refers to
a “crippled state of mind,” where the “condition for the regular use of the
powers of mind is lacking” (as in the case of “insanity”) (VA-Friedländer
25:554). Identifying such problems exemplifies the role of the science of
anthropology in determining whether the human being can “fulfill what
we require that he ought to do.”
The distinction between the understanding and reason involves the
nature of the relation to experience as well as the ability to go beyond
experience. In this regard Kant introduces the notion of the “idea” and
foreshadows its meaning as a practical task defined by reason. He speaks
here of cognition “by means of the understanding from experience”; cog-
nition by means of reason is also possible in regard to these things, but
there are many things which can only be cognized solely through reason.
These are such [things] where reason provides the idea as the basis, for
example, virtue. Experience indeed gives us examples of virtue, yet I must
still have the concept to judge such. For all cases of cognition, where it
is a question not of how something is, but of how it ought to be, there
reason is always necessary, since reason indicates how things must be, but
experience only how they are . . . The cognition of things which is the model,
according to which something is to be arranged, it is this cognition which
is the idea . . . The idea is therefore different from experience; it is found in
reason and not in experience. Hence it is false to say, a virtuous man, but
[one should say] one who pursues the idea of virtue in a way so as to be
equal to it. (VA-Friedländer 25:550–1)
The stage is here set for the conception of reason as the basis for morality.
The stage is also set for Kant’s cosmopolitan conception of philosophy.
That reason engages in an examination of “its vocation, of its limits, of
its use” is stated explicitly in these lectures: “this cognition of its sphere is
the architectonic use of reason” (VA-Friedländer 25:551). Kant distinguishes
the “artificer of reason” (the “mathematician and physicist”) from the “one
making the law of human reason known,” the one who is a “philosopher in
the true sense”; this name is “also only an idea, which one must endeavor
to equal” (VA-Friedländer 25:551). The parallel with a central passage of the
“Architectonic” of the Critique of Pure Reason is remarkable:
there is also a world concept (conceptus cosmicus) on which the name [of
philosophy] has always been based, primarily when one, as it were, person-
ified this concept and represented it in the ideal of the philosopher as its
archetype. From this point of view, philosophy is the science of the relation
of all cognition to the essential purposes of human reason (teleologia rationis
humanae), and the philosopher is not an artificer of reason, but the legislator
of human reason . . .
The mathematician, the naturalist, the logician, however superior the former
may be in rational cognitions in general [and whatever] progress the latter
may [achieve] in philosophical cognition in particular, are yet only artificers
of reason. There is, in the ideal, still another teacher, who assigns all these
[their place and] uses them as tools in order to promote the essential purposes
of human reason. Him alone we should call the philosopher; but since he is
himself surely not to be found anywhere, although the idea of his legislation
is everywhere found in each human reason, we will thus stay strictly with
the latter and determine more closely what philosophy, according to this
cosmopolitan concept, prescribes for systematic unity from the standpoint
of purposes.
Kant goes on to note that there can only be a single highest purpose, to
which all other ends necessarily belong as means. This single, highest “final
purpose is none other than the entire vocation of human beings [die ganze
Bestimmung des Menschen] and the philosophy of it is called morality”
(KrV A838–40/B866–8).5 In the Friedländer Lectures Kant concludes his
reflections on the architectonic use of reason by observing that the more
one “reflects upon the vocation of human reason, the more the individual
approximates the philosopher” (VA-Friedländer 25:551). To attain to this
use of reason is to be well on the way to perfect it and, with that, to perfect
one’s nature as a being of reason and speech. As Kant spells it out in the
Critique of Pure Reason, “From the entire course” of its discussion, writes
Kant, a reader of the “critique will have been sufficiently persuaded” of a
number of conclusions. These include the fact that
human reason, which is already dialectical by the direction [or orienta-
tion, Richtung] of its nature, can never dispense with such a science as one
that restrains it [literally, reins it in] and one that prevents, through a sci-
entific and completely evident self-knowledge, the havoc which a lawless,
speculative reason would otherwise unfailingly wreak in morality as well as
religion . . . Thus, what may be called philosophy in the genuine sense [of
that term] is made up of metaphysics, both of nature and of morals, but
above all, of the critique of that reason which ventures forth on its own
wings, [the critique] which precedes [metaphysics] as a preparatory exercise
(propaedeutic). Philosophy relates everything to wisdom, but through the
path of science which, when it has once been paved, is never overgrown and
permits no straying . . . [M]etaphysics [constitutes] also the completion of all
cultivation of human reason, which is indispensable . . . [f]or [metaphysics]
examines reason in regard to its elements and highest maxims which must
underlie the very possibility of some sciences and the use of them all. (KrV
A849–51/B877–9)
The use of reason in accordance with appropriate maxims and principles is
important also for the effect on human animal and sensuous nature. As we
5 For a discussion of this principle as a formal pedagogical principle and for the sense of architectonic
as a capacity for directing, lawgiving, and teaching, see Munzel (2012), Chapter 3, especially 213–25.
saw above in the passage cited from the Critique of Practical Reason, well
into his critical period Kant continues to note reason’s responsibility with
regard to the needs and interests of the sensible side of the human being.
One finds the claim to be made even more strongly, namely that, without
reason’s influence, the other natural aptitudes are literally held back in
the development of their own inherent potentialities. That human beings
make use of their reason to think for themselves has consequences for the
human sensibilities and ultimately for the forms of political organization.
As Kant puts it in his essay on Enlightenment:
When nature has uncovered under this hard husk the germ [Keim] for which
she cares most tenderly, namely, the propensity and calling to free thinking,
this germ gradually in turn impacts [wirkt zurück] the Sinnesart [sensibilities]
of the people (whereby they become more and more capable of acting [in
accordance with freedom]). And, finally, it even [impacts] the principles of
government which itself finds it beneficial to treat human beings, who are
now more than machines, commensurate with their dignity. (WA 8:41–2)
For all of this to happen, education – and specifically the cultivation of

human reason – is indispensable. As Kant put it in the Critique of Practical
Reason, the use of reason “does not come of itself like that of the feet, from
frequent exercise.” As he notes (in the passage cited from the Critique of
Pure Reason), its use can be quite lawless and merely frequently exercising
it in that fashion would wreak havoc indeed. To get to the level of the
cultivation of reason, animality first has to be transformed into humanity.
The full process entails a number of stages to which Kant refers throughout
his writings. We turn next to the account found in the Friedländer Lectures
(with references to some of the parallel statements found elsewhere).
3. Stages of education
The 1775–6 anthropology lectures are unique in that they have a sepa-
rate section “On Education,” but other sections too, especially “On the
Character of Humanity in General,” are replete with commentary on edu-
cation (including many allusions to issues of the education debates of the
long eighteenth century). In general, in these lectures Kant identifies four
levels of “constraint”: civil order, propriety, moral order, and conscience.
In his other writings he delineates four stages of education – discipline,
cultivation, civilization, moralization – with many shared elements found
in both versions. Much of “On the Character of Humanity in General”
is devoted to the “advance from savagery to the civil constitution,” with
the “perfection of the state of human beings” bound up with the “perfec-
tion of the civil constitution” (VA-Friedländer 25:689). The basic premises
are taken from Rousseau: “The human being is determined as an ani-
mal for the woods, but as a human being for society” (VA-Friedländer
25:689). In the “civil state” the “human being of nature” is “disciplined,” or
“refashioned and reshaped” (through which “violence is done to nature”)
(VA-Friedländer 25:684). Thus the “civil constitution is a constraint”; it is
the “source of the development of talents, of the concepts of justice and
all moral perfection”; it does so by maintaining a civil order that permits
relations among human beings who begin from a state of mutual suspicion
(VA-Friedländer 25:689, 680–8; see also 678–9, 691). While passages such
as these seem to imply that the concepts of justice and morality are here
viewed as empirically based, the context of the whole discussion lends itself
more to the interpretation that becomes clearer in similar references in
Kant’s other writings; namely the need for producing conditions under
which the human and rational aptitudes can develop. The objective is to
facilitate the development of all the human capacities so that they are fit
for, or adequate to, the task of executing reason’s purposes. As Kant notes
already in these lectures, “the germs” for the “perfection of humanity” are
“innate in humanity [and] it is thus possible that they will be developed
through cultivation” (VA-Friedländer 25:695; see also 694).
He also explicitly raises the question of the order of the development
of the state and of human beings. Which is the “condition” of the other:
“does the perfection of every single human being depend on the perfection
of the state,” or is it the other way around (VA-Friedländer 25:691)? He
concludes that
in the first place, one must see to it that those, who are afterwards to educate
others, are [themselves] well educated. If teachers and priests were educated,
if the concepts of pure morality would prevail among them, then they would
also soon come to occupy the highest position, enter the schools of rulers,
and through these, the whole could afterwards be educated. (VA-Friedländer
25:691)6
Concretely, to make real progress two things minimally would need to
change in the present state of affairs: an end must be put to the wars so
that attention and resources are directed to the internal condition of the
state and its government, and those in power must recognize the impor-
tance of education and apply their efforts to it (in order that the “moral
6 As I have argued in Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy, ultimately the critical philosophy serves as the
needed education (Munzel (2012), Chapter 3).
germs” innate to human nature will be developed through education) (VA-
Friedländer 25:695, 696). To contribute to these changes “the philosopher
must make his concepts” of the perfection of humanity and the needed
constitution of the state “known,” while “teachers must form character,
so that the rulers would have insight” into what is needed and “bring it
about” (VA-Friedländer 25:696). The process is a long one: “thousands
of years will still be required,” writes Kant, and meanwhile “nature will
always be sufficient until such a paradise emerges on earth” (that is, until
the “human race . . . will attain the greatest degree of perfection”) (VA-
That nature has a propaedeutic pedagogical role in facilitating the cul-
tivation of reason and promoting the development of the human species
toward its fulfillment as a being of reason and speech and finally as a moral
being is a point to which Kant returns throughout the critical writings.
For example, in the Critique of Pure Reason he observes that without the
“purposive unity” laid down by nature itself, we “would not have any rea-
son, since we would have no school for it and no cultivation [of reason]
through objects that would offer to it the material for such concepts of
purposes” (KrV A817/B845). The operative assumption for Kant’s account
in the Critique of Practical Reason is that “human nature is so constituted”
that “even subjectively, the exhibition of pure virtue can have more power
over the human mind [Gemüt] and can provide far greater motivation”
not only to effectuate the “legality of actions,” but “to produce firmer
resolve to prefer the law to everything else purely out of respect for it”
than could ever be generated by appeals to the “attractions . . . of all that
may be counted as happiness or even by all threats of pain and harm.”
If “human nature were not so constituted, no way of presenting the law
through recommendations and roundabout means could ever bring forth
morality of the comportment of one’s mind [Gesinnung]” (KpV 5:151–2).
This passage also exemplifies the relation of the science of anthropology
and morality; that is, the former examines the inner capacities of human
nature so that one can see whether the human being is capable of carrying
out what is required. Ultimately one must attain a “cultivation” that is “a
schooling that makes us responsive to higher purposes than nature itself
can deliver” (KU 5:433). However, as Kant poses it as late as 1795, “the
essential question in regard to the aim of perpetual peace” is what nature
does on the behalf of human moral purpose, to ensure that “what human
beings ought to do according to laws of freedom, but fail to do,” is yet done
by means of “nature’s constraint” but “without jeopardizing freedom” (EF
8:365). The constraint imposed by the constitution on the “inclination to
mutual acts of violence,” Kant writes here, is a “step toward morality” but
“not yet a moral step” (EF 8:375–6n).
References elsewhere in Kant’s writings to the needed transition to a
civilized state include his essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cos-
mopolitan Aim, his published lectures on anthropology, and his notes “On
Pedagogy.” The pedagogical role of the republican constitution is addressed
most explicitly in Perpetual Peace. In “On Pedagogy” Kant speaks of the
“negative” work of education as a discipline; it “transforms animality into
humanity” and, as such, is the indispensable first step whose “omission
can never be replaced” (VP 9:441, 444). In the Anthropology he writes
that “human beings are determined by reason to be in society with others
and therein to cultivate, civilize, and moralize themselves through art and
science.” They are further determined by reason,
however great their propensity may be for animality (for surrendering pas-
sively to the incitements of ease and comfortable living they call happiness),
instead to be active, to make themselves worthy of their humanity in battle
with the hindrances adhering to them through the crudeness of nature.
(A 7:324–5)
In his 1784 essay on universal history we read that the ultimate environment
conducive to the complete development of all the human aptitudes is the
“completely just civil constitution” under whose governance “all the germs
[lying in human nature] can be developed” and human “destiny . . . here
on earth may be fulfilled” (Idea 8:22, 25, 30).
Civil constraint is not, however, enough. As Kant notes in his Friedländer
Lectures, “the constraint of the authorities does not extend to anything
beyond the external civil order and the right of others”; it does not extend
to matters of “decency in the good life” – that is, “to propriety and the moral
life” – and so “another constraint is lacking here which could compel one in
the case where civil constraint would be badly misplaced” (VA-Friedländer
25:692). The constraint of propriety entails a mutual compulsion among
human beings with “regard to taste, modesty, refinement, courtesy, and
decorum” (VA-Friedländer 25:692). For the further development of moral
character the “concepts of morality must be purified and respect for the
moral law must be instituted” (VA-Friedländer 25:692, original empha-
sis). Kant here speaks of two levels: moral constraint in which human
beings pass judgment on one another about their moral conduct, and the
internal constraint of conscience “where every individual, in accordance
with the moral law, passes judgment about his [own] moral conduct”
(VA-Friedländer 25:692, 693). Where the moral constraint is established,
“honor” would be a matter of being “regarded as an upright man by every-
one,” and not a matter of having the privilege of “riding in a carriage”
(VA-Friedländer 25:693). Moreover, “moral character,” not “outer conduct
or skill,” would be of paramount importance with regard to those seeking
office (VA-Friedländer 25:693). Where conscience has been cultivated, “this
constraint, since it is an inner one, would be the strongest, and then indeed
none other would be necessary” (VA-Friedländer 25:693).7
Beyond these levels of constraint pertaining to the course of humanity
in history, Kant turns to the specific education of “human beings as chil-
dren and as adolescents” in the section “On Education” (VA-Friedländer
25:723).8 The fourfold division of the education of children here consists in
the development of nature (which pertains to health and the “proper use”
of one’s “powers and sensory organs”), the “guidance of freedom” (which
entails discipline of the will), the “instruction of the understanding” (which
is both negative insofar as one seeks to prevent errors and positive insofar as
one gives instruction), and the “development of reason and character” (VA-
Friedländer 25:723, 724). With regard to the last, “what must be attended
to is that the child cognize everything based on reasons and that it act
from principles” (VA-Friedländer 25:724). The child must both be kept
on the course “to humanity” and also be “prepared to exercise humanity
toward others; the latter means that it learns to esteem highly the right of
human beings and the dignity of humanity in his person.” These, writes
Kant, “are the two things in the world which are holy” (VA-Friedländer
25:727). The further instruction at the adolescent stage involves the recog-
nition of the “duties” one has “with regard to the human species” and the
“duties” one has “in the civil order” (VA-Friedländer 25:727–8). Last comes
“religion” which entails gaining insight into “the true relation with God”
As Kant returns to and develops these elements of education in his
critical writings, his conception of education emphasizes the “cultivation
of reason, as well as the fitness of all the human aptitudes for the concrete
realization of reason’s ideas and principles” (Munzel (2012), 208). As I have
argued, “the critical philosophy in its pedagogical role . . . is not merely
7 Kant returns to the notion of conscience in other writings (especially in his Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason and his Metaphysics of Morals), in some texts connecting it with religion
(as he does in the anthropology lectures) and in others treating it as being of a piece with practical
reason. For a more detailed discussion see Munzel (forthcoming, 2013).
8 The influence of Rousseau’s Émile is evident in this section, but Kant also explicitly refers to
the Philanthropin, an institute of education based on Lockean, Rousseauian, and Enlightenment
principles founded in 1774 in Dessau by Johann Bernhard Basedow. Kant actively supported the
school and communicated with its directors.
about reason, it is a disciplinarian and instructor for reason” (Munzel
(2012), 230). The fourfold program of education referenced in the critical
writings (discipline, civilization, cultivation, and moralization) may be
summarized as follows.
Discipline is the negative task; unruliness (in any of its forms, whether it
be that of the inclinations and passions, or the undisciplined eros of the-
oretical reason) must be eradicated to set the stage for the positive work
of cultivation, the shaping and orienting of undeveloped natural aptitudes.
The mature, formal critical sense of cultivation (as expressed in the Critique
of Judgment) is “producing the fitness of a rational being for any pur-
poses whatever of its choosing (thus [producing its fitness for] freedom).”
(KU 5:431)
In their essence, to civilize is to cultivate taste (that is, to cultivate human
sociability and manners), while to moralize is to cultivate reason (that is, to
facilitate the consciousness of the moral law and make students proficient
in adopting it in their judgments as the guiding maxim, thus preparing the
ground for moral character). In the broadest sense, then, the development
of any and all of the human aptitudes is a matter of their cultivation. As we
read in the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (MS 6:391, 392), for example, it
is a matter of duty to “cultivate the crude aptitudes of our nature,” indeed
to “cultivate all our capacities in general” (both “physical” and “moral”) for
the sake of “promoting the purposes set before us by reason”; through such
“cultivation we make ourselves worthy of the humanity” that is our calling.9
4. Conclusion
The surrounding historical philosophical context for Kant’s discussion of
these themes is the ongoing pedagogical debates of the long eighteenth
century.10 In these debates the issue of the cultivation of reason for its
sound use in the practical affairs of life was a central theme. The develop-
ing discourse was shared at the popular, social, and political levels, as well as
in educational and philosophical circles. Its leitmotif was laid down in the
early seventeenth century in the Great Didactic by the Czech educational
reformer and religious leader Jan Amos Comenius: “the human being must
first be formed [gebildet; Latin formatio] to be a human being”; “nature
provides the aptitudes [Anlagen], but only discipline [Zucht] produces the
actual human being out of them.”11 Considered retrospectively, this early
9 Munzel (2012), 209.
10 For a discussion of salient aspects and authors of this debate see Munzel (2012), Chapters 1 and 2.
11 Comenius (2000), 40. It was published as a Latin edition in 1657 in Amsterdam, with an initial
Czech edition as early as 1627; Comenius’s dates are 1592–1670.
statement that the formation of the human being is made possible by
nature, but only realized by rearing and education, may be seen as set-
ting the stage for the discussion of the ensuing centuries (Munzel (2012),
84). The statement is echoed by Kant in his notes on pedagogy: “Human
beings can only become human beings through education [Erziehung].
They are nothing save what education makes of them. It must be noted
that human beings can only be educated by human beings, who must
likewise be educated” (VP 9:443). In the eighteenth century, texts for the
instruction of reason (Vernunftlehren) abound; they include sections enti-
tled Methodenlehren. As I have argued elsewhere, Kant is in agreement
with his contemporaries on the great goals of the age: the achievement
of a moral- and civic-minded citizenry and of human freedom. His dis-
agreement lies both with the underlying human self-understanding and
with the meanings of these terms and achievements as construed by his
predecessors and contemporaries. The engagement of the thought of his
contemporaries is far more explicit in the Lectures on Anthropology than
in the critical writings, and so for the contemporary reader, as for Kant’s
students, they provide a window into the terms of the debate as Kant
engages it and ultimately brings his critical examination to bear. The basis
for the relations of morality, the schooling of reason, and the science of
anthropology (conceived as an idea) is laid in the anthropology lectures.
Here too we find a nascent identification of the central critical problem,
namely the issue of the appropriate principles governing judgment in the
various spheres of reason’s engagement of the world – theoretical (cogni-
tive), practical (moral), aesthetic, teleological, and virtuous (ethical). The
discussion in the anthropology lectures helps one see how and why solving
this problem is, for Kant, of the essence for the perfection of the being of
reason and speech. To solve this problem is to address a crucial pedagogical
task. As such it fulfills Kant’s own mandate as he expresses it in his notes
on pedagogy: it is incumbent on every generation to “work on the plan of
a more purposive education,” a task which he further claims is the “great-
est and most difficult problem that can be assigned to humankind” (VP
9:445–6).
c ha pter 11
Kant on civilisation, culture and moralisation

Catherine Wilson
Kant’s thoughts and convictions about human beings reflected a number

of contemporary developments. This chapter will explore the relationship
in the Lectures on Anthropology between the title themes and three impor-
tant aspects of the wider context of the emergence of anthropology as
a discipline in the eighteenth century, namely secularisation, animalism
and historical pessimism. Kant was a proponent of secularisation, but he
rejected animalism and the historical pessimism that often accompanied it,
and his views on these three topics can provide an important perspective on
the more recondite elements of his philosophy, including his epistemology
and his metaphysics of morals. Although it is the Friedländer Lectures, either
because they offer the most complete record of what Kant was telling his
students, or because they demonstrate Kant’s particular engagement with
the writings of Rousseau in the mid-1770s, that are most useful for this
purpose, I shall draw on all the Lectures and the Menschenkunde to try to
situate Kant within some of the most significant debates and concerns of
the second half of the eighteenth century.
First, secularisation. The critique of religion in the second half of the
century ranged from historical criticism of the Bible and scepticism over
the truth of particular doctrines of the Christian religion, the existence of
a creator God remaining unquestioned, to a willingness to embrace the
radical doctrine that matter was eternal and the powers of nature sufficient
to produce all the phenomena.1 Kant’s private religious beliefs, as opposed
to his theology, remain shrouded in mystery, but J. F. Abegg reported
that Kant told him in private conversation in 1798 that his faith in the
1 The ‘deist’ Herman Samuel Reimarus unleashed the Fragmentenstreit with his ‘Wolfenbuttel Frag-
ments’ posthumously and anonymously published as ‘Fragments by an Anonymous Writer’ by
Lessing (1774–7). Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were translated into German (1781,
Leipzig), as was Holbach’s Système de la nature (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1783). There followed the
Pantheismusstreit beginning in 1785. Lucretius’s atheistic didactic poem De Rerum Natura was read
throughout the eighteenth century in many editions and translations and was well known and
admired by Kant.
191
192 Catherine Wilson
existence of God had fallen away gradually since his youth (Abegg (1976),
147, 184). From the earliest Lectures on Anthropology of 1772–3 of Collins
and Parow, in any case, the expected references to the Creator of man
and to the accountability relationship between God and human beings are
nowhere in evidence. By the time of the Friedländer Lectures, God appears
only as an ‘idea’, and Kant quotes Epicurus on this score seemingly in
approving fashion (VA-Friedländer 25:550, 25:662). Kant’s anthropology
not only permits the human being to be understood without reference
either to his origins – he may be a creature sprung from the earth, or with
ape-like ancestors, or descended from an Adam and Eve created by divine
fiat – or to his individual fate in Heaven or Hell, but also requires this
understanding. According to the critical philosophy, it is the case both
that the human ‘soul’ and morality can be understood in all their essentials
in the absence of any knowledge whatsoever about God, the Creation or
the life to come, and that even a detailed knowledge of physics, natural
history and empirical psychology cannot answer questions about the nature
of the soul and morality. This is not to say that the Lectures, or for that
matter Kant’s contemporaneous or subsequent writings, adopt a Spinozist
or Epicurean perspective. Kant employs a strong, if depersonalised, notion
of ‘Providence’, as is discussed below.
Second, animalism. The eighteenth century oversaw extensive descrip-
tion of animal morphology and behaviour. It was a period devoted to
taxonomy, but hardly ‘mere taxonomy’, insofar as taxonomy was allied
to speculation over the origins of life, the origins of the species, and the
relation of human beings to the other animals. In addition to making
occasional references to the Swede Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) and the Dutch
anatomist Peter Camper (1722–89), Kant cites George-Louis Leclerc, the
Comte de Buffon (1707–88), whose multi-volume Histoire naturelle was
one of the most widely read and significant books of the eighteenth cen-
tury and well known to him.2 In the fourteenth volume (1766) of the first
French edition of the Histoire, Buffon declared,
The form of everything that breathes is nearly the same . . . [E]very animal
has the same organisation, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones,
the same flesh. The same motion of the fluids, and the same action in all the
solids. In all of them [the anatomist] has found a heart, veins and arteries;
the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion, nutrition and secre-
tion; the same solid structure, erected with the same materials . . . Nutrition,
2 The German translation of the first three volumes, with a preface by Albrecht Haller, appeared in
1751, with subsequent volumes appearing from 1771 up to 1782. Kant drew extensively on Buffon’s
history of the planet in framing his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte of 1755.
Kant on civilisation, culture and moralisation 193
expansion and reproduction . . . are general and common to every orga-
nized substance; they are eternal and divine; and, far from being effaced
or destroyed by time, they are only renewed and rendered more plain and
evident. (Buffon (1797), Volume 9, 133–4)
From this appreciation of underlying similitude, shared later by Camper
and by Johann von Goethe, Buffon would go on to propose models of
descent from a small number of ancestral species, a topic Kant took up
in his later writings (Lovejoy (1910); Lovejoy (1911); Wilson (2005)). In his
‘Preliminary Discourse’ to the Histoire, Buffon declared that an important
truth followed from the anatomical facts, a truth ‘which perhaps humbles
man. This truth is that he ought to classify himself with the animals to
whom his whole material being connects him’. Kant agreed, but only to an
extent, and his Lectures repeatedly return to the theme of the implications of
the animality of man and the incompleteness of the materialist perspective.
The curiosity of Locke and Leibniz over the boundaries of the human
species (Leibniz (1981), 2344) was replaced by questions and sometimes
convictions based on a more detailed knowledge of African and South
Asian fauna. In 1735, Linnaeus created a sensation by classifying humans
amongst the anthropomorpha, along with apes, monkey and sloths (Greene
(1959), 176). Edward Tyson had much earlier (1699) given a remarkable
description of what he called the orang-utan (or ‘man of the woods’, in
fact a chimpanzee) that threw into doubt the line of demarcation between
man and ape. Either there were distinct species anatomically intermediate
between humans and animals, or else these wild men were fully human
and perhaps fully educable, despite their superficial appearance. Rousseau
took up the issue in a lengthy footnote to his Discourse on the Origins
of Inequality of 1755, translated into German the following year. There
were two criteria of humanity, he suggested: could these animals ‘perfect’
themselves by learning to speak and to participate in civil society, and
could they interbreed with typical humans?3 Experiments to answer the
first question, he noted, have not been made, and to attempt to answer the
second would be, he suggested, ‘impractical’ or perhaps unethical before
we established that they were humans (Rousseau (1990), Volume 4, 83;
Rousseau (1964), 210). In 1766, in a chapter innocuously and misleadingly
titled ‘On the Nomenclature of Apes’, Buffon addressed the question of
this taxon. Mind, thought and speech, he declared, belong to man but not
3 A species as defined by Buffon was a community of animals whose pairings could produce fertile
offspring. This reproductive criterion had, however, no relation to the intuitive notion of an animal
species as a group of animals that look and behave alike. ‘A very artificial rule’, Henry Home, Lord
Kames, called it (Home (2007), Volume 1, 6).
to the orang-utan or the pongo or to other apes and monkeys. Attending
only to externals, he suggested, one might well take the ape for a species
of human, and the Hottentot for a species of ape, but the interval between
the Hottentot and the ape was in fact ‘immense’ (Buffon (1797), Volume
9, 139).
Kant replicated Buffon’s thought in the early Collins Lectures: ‘Regarding
his body, the human being is little different from the animals, and the
Hottentot is so near to the Orangutan that if one took into account
only the shape in determining the species, one might be doubtful’ (VA-
Collins 25:13–14*).4 The human being can be considered, however, from
two points of view. ‘In the system of nature, the human being belongs to
the animal kingdom. However, if I see the human being as part of the world
system, he belongs to the rational beings’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1415, 498).
In the Mrongovius Lectures, Kant gives some attention to questions such
as whether humans were originally quadrupedal or bipedal, vegetarian or
omnivorous. In the Menschenkunde, he decides that it is improbable that
human beings once went on four feet, as Rousseau and the Italian physician
Moscati maintained, and this for anatomical reasons. Their knees are bent
forward, they have short arms relative to their legs, the embryo has calluses
only on its feet and not on its hands, and the bone structure of the orang-
utan and other apes is different from ours (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1194).
Buffon declared that the human being possesses a ‘soul’ (âme), and that
the conflict between human rationality and the ‘material animal principle’
is ongoing.5 By ‘soul’, it is far from clear that he envisioned an incorpo-
real, detachable, immortal substance; he may have meant simply that the
human being possess certain rational capacities, language and inventive-
ness. Kant’s view expressed in 1775–6 is virtually identical and to that extent
conventional:
Human beings can thus be considered twofold, as animals and as intelli-
gences. As animals they are capable of feelings, impressions, and represen-
tations, as intelligences they are conscious of themselves, which lies at the
basis of all higher powers. As intelligences they have control over their state
and over their animality, and this is called Mind [Geist]. (VA-Friedländer
25:475–6*)
4 Here and below, the asterisk indicates that the existing translation has been slightly modified after
comparison with the original.
5 ‘The interior man’, says Buffon, ‘is double’. He is composed of two opposed principles, one ‘a pure
light, accompanied with serenity and peace, a salutary source, whence flow science, reason, wisdom’,
the other ‘a false light . . . an impetuous torrent fraught with error and passion’ (Buffon (1797), v:
55–6).
The various terms for ‘soul’, including Seele in the Lectures, are employed,
however, as synonyms for mentality, not for the incorporeal or immortal
portion of the human being.6
The third important development was the challenge of Enlightenment
pessimism. Historians of culture, especially in Scotland, synthesised the
available travel literature and ancient and modern accounts of European
history to explore the transition from the state of nature to that of civil-
isation and to compare one with the other. They were interested in the
origins of monogamy from an assumed prior state of universal polygamy
and what they regarded as the disburdening of women from her slave status
in savagery and barbarism.
As Henry Vyverberg has argued by means of examples drawn from
Buffon, Rousseau, Voltaire, the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Melchior
Grimm, ‘the doctrine of progress was not unresisted in the eighteenth
century’ (Vyverberg (1958), 75). Along with the ‘progressionist’ doctrines
of Condorcet and the appreciation of the technological developments of
eighteenth-century European life, such as carriages, printing, gardening,
the polish of manners, the sophistication of poetry and visual art, and the
brilliant accomplishments of natural science and mathematics,7 came a cri-
tique of civilisation and accusations of mediocrity, cruelty and decadence.
It was stimulated by the ability to consider human institutions and their
creators and participants outside a theological framework, not as guided by
Providence but as having been subject to accidents in prehistory. Humans
were seen as engaging in perverse group practices, and as made miserable
and corrupted by the byproducts of the ascent to civilisation from animal-
ity through savagery. The immiseration of the peasantry, the slaughter of
native populations as described in the Abbé Raynal’s Histoire des Deux-Indes
(1770) and the brutality of European warfare were understood to follow
from the concentration of and search after wealth: the luxury critique of
the ancients was revived with the new opulence of colonialism to feed it
with examples.
6 It will be worthwhile, Kant says, ironically in Collins, ‘to consider the mind separated from the body,
and to establish, by means of observation, whether the action of the body is necessarily required for
thinking. If experience shows us the contrary, then a single deduction from experience will provide
us with the most secure proof of the immortality of the soul’ (VA-Collins 25:9*). Kant does not
return to the topic of immortality in the Lectures.
7 Henry Home, the cultural historian alluded to by Kant, observes that the carrot, cabbage and turnip
were introduced to England only in the time of Henry viii; the artichoke, apricot and damask rose
somewhat later; that knives were first made in England in 1563; pocket watches in 1577, and coaches
in 1580 (Home (2007), Volume 1, 109–10).
For Buffon, the animal enjoys the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of
a purely material being that knows what suits it, and it does not suffer
from human maladies, while ‘[a]lmost all men lead a life of timidity and
contention and the greatest part die of chagrin’ (Buffon (1797), Volume 5,
36). The philosopher might well be impressed by an ‘absolute savage’, such
as a boy reared by bears or found in the woods. And ‘possibly he might
discover in it more mildness, serenity and peace, than in his own; he might
also perceive, that virtue belongs more to the savage than to the civilized
man, and that vice owes its birth to society’ (Buffon (1797), Volume 4,
315).8
Rousseau’s above-mentioned Discourse, which presented a history of
humanity drawing heavily on Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, is vividly
present in the Friedländer Lectures. Rousseau, who described the transition
from a happy state of small-group living to a miserable state of oppres-
sion and frustration, propounded what Kant termed three ‘paradoxes’: the
increasing misery of human beings as a result of the progress of the arts
and sciences, the simultaneous development of civilisation and inequality,
and the harm done by ‘the artificial method in moralising’ (VA-Mrongovius
25:1419–20). Rousseau was a divisive writer and in Mrongovius he is rather
dismissively portrayed as a victim of organic mental illness: ‘Rousseau was
one of the greatest eccentrics, since he was an extreme misanthrope; at
the same time he was a great genius. After his death a large amount of
water was found in his head. This could have perhaps been the cause of his
eccentricity’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1302*). Yet Kant also portrays Rousseau
respectfully as ‘the most distinguished’ writer on the ‘character of man in
general’ (VA-Friedländer 25:675).
Two features of civilisation were regarded by Kant as particularly oner-
ous, and he gives them both sustained attention in the Friedländer Lectures.
One was the sexual frustration entailed by the European custom of late
marriage for men, and the other was warfare. Buffon had brought the top-
ics of puberty and virility into the open (see Fellows (1960), 193), and travel
literature and the trade in banned books brought awareness of savage liber-
alism and European libertinism into juxtaposition with official European
morals. Henry Home, Lord Kames, whose Sketches on Human History
were rapidly translated into German in 1774 and were known to Kant,
observed the conflict between the sexual interest of early youth and the
need for education, hence delay in marriage. Troubled by this discrepancy,
he decided that Providence intended humans to marry early, and that only
8 On Buffon and Rousseau, see Fellows (1960).
‘pride and luxury’ delayed their settling down (Home (2007), Volume 1,
265n). Kant agrees that there is a discrepancy between instinctive needs and
the requirements of society and that its consequences are lamentable. In the
Menschenkunde of the early 1780s, he observes that in the state of nature,
a human male can nourish and maintain himself already in his tenth year,
and that by his sixteenth he can propagate his kind and also maintain and
defend wife and children. In civilisation, with the multiplication of eco-
nomic needs, marriage is delayed until age thirty (Menschenkunde 25:1196).
This leads to fierce conflict between nature and culture and to suffering and
‘vice’ – by which Kant presumably understands masturbation, prostitution,
female unchastity and infanticide. Further, sexual tension and conflict are
exacerbated in civilisation because of the artifice that all writers seem to
agree is absent in animal and savage life: love.
Through marriage, Kant explains to his students, according to
Friedländer’s notes, a woman becomes free (presumably to pursue adul-
terous relationships under cover), while a man loses his freedom (VA-
Friedländer 25:7124). In civilisation, but not in the animal world or in
savagery, women adorn themselves alluringly to rouse the imaginations
and appetites of men. They compete with one another and appear to be
differentiated one from another. This leads to adultery (VA-Friedländer
25:687) and to the hypocrisy of gallantry. For, at the same time, women
feign a coldness and indifference to sex that they do not feel, enabling
them to manipulate and dominate men. Kant believes they do so since
they would otherwise be exploited, and since men ‘demand this refusal and
coldness of the woman’. Gratification is greater ‘when the refusing party
yields’ (VA-Friedländer 25:709–10).
The sex drive is not, however, to be condemned. It is ‘moral
fantasy . . . to consider sexual desire as improper’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1360*,
reading ‘desire’ for Neigung). The contempt for sex is like contempt for
the preservation of one’s life; it involves the attempt to raise oneself above
humanity. Even love is not to be scorned. In a less cynical spirit than Buffon
and Rousseau, who declared that ‘moral love’ is a fraud and only ‘physical
love’ authentic,9 Kant declares his appreciation for the power of the imag-
ination, which, he thinks, reduces the crudity of the sexual instinct. But
the fundamental conflict between sexual desire and the economic require-
ments of civilisation is, Kant thinks, simply insoluble (VA-Friedländer
25:683). The cultural and moral destiny of man – his overcoming of
9 On love in Buffon and Rousseau, see Fellows (1960), 193. ‘Among the many observations expressed by
Buffon on the subject of love is one which is supposed to have deeply shocked Mme de Pompadour:
“Il n’y a que le physique de cette passion qui soit bon.”’
crudity and vice, the ennobling of his sentiments, and cultivation of
beauty – require precisely that he fight against his animal endowment.
‘On this side [sex], nature has determined us for animality, but on the
other side we are determined for civil order, namely with regard to the
perfection of humanity. Now, through the civil order, we must do vio-
lence to the natural state.’ Luxury and refinement are not corruptions of
our innocence; on the contrary, they serve to ‘weaken [the force] of our
animality’ (VA-Friedländer 25:684*).
The other great trouble under civilisation, warfare waged by sovereign
nations, is also a central preoccupation of Kant’s. On this topic, he presents
himself in a deeply ambiguous way. Warfare was strongly condemned by
Bernard de Mandeville, the Abbé St Pierre, Buffon, Voltaire, and the
Encyclopedist Louis de Joucourt; Kant, by contrast, rejects the pacifist
sentiments and initiatives of his own time, not as utopian – for he looks
forward to a properly policed world without nationalistic aggression – but as
premature. It is here that his understanding of Nature as a teleological force,
as embracing processes above and beyond those observed in Newtonian
mechanics and even in the development of individual living organisms,
comes to the fore.
At present, Kant believes, Europeans are in an unhappy, intermediate
state. In developing the arts and sciences and entering an age of hierarchy
and luxury, they have lost the simple happiness of the animal and the
savage, and they suffer under the miseries of civilisation. However, they
have not yet attained the perfection of civil society that is possible for the
future. Nor have they attained the moral virtue of which they are capable in
principle (VA-Friedländer 25:690). The animal life ruled by instinct is good
because the species fulfil their functions capably. The human life in which
freedom is combined with reason is also good. But animality combined
with freedom, as in the savage or partially civilised condition of man, is
evil (VA-Pillau 25:844). Our animality is the part of us that maintains the
life of the species, but we no longer need the passions – especially fear and
anger – that were formerly required in the state of nature for our survival.
They must be suppressed and this is possible, for ‘Nature did not give
us these passions, but only the underlying potentials [Anlagen] for them’
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1343*).
Kant’s view of natural man ‘mistrustful, violent, and hostile toward his
own kind’ (VA-Friedländer 25:678) goes far beyond what is to be found in
St Augustine, Hobbes or La Rochefoucauld. It is orthogonal to that of the
moral sense or native endowment school of Hutcheson, Shaftesbury and
Adam Smith, who ascribe sympathy and benevolent motives to human
beings antecedent to cultural indoctrination. Kant appears unimpressed
by Rousseau’s assertion that pity was a basic emotion of early man, and by
the suggestion of Buffon that the perfect savage might be a mild creature.
Benevolence appears as a duty in Kant’s moral philosophy, but, whether it
is considered as a natural, psychological trait or as one fostered by civilisa-
tion, it is wavering, undependable and often hypocritical (VA-Friedländer
25:504–5).
The basic capacities and drives of the human considered as an ani-
mal, and shared with the animals, include the drive for self-preservation
(VA-Friedländer 25:585); frugality (VA-Friedländer 25:616–17); the sexual
drive; dexterity; and pugnacity and its companion trait, xenophobia (VA-
Friedländer 25:678). Animality (rather than Adam’s fall and the transmis-
sion of original sin) is, for Kant, the source of the ‘evil’ in man. Somewhat
offhandedly, he asks his class:
Among the animals, and among all beings, what [kind of] a character does
[the human being] have? How much good and how much evil is in him?
Does he contain a source for evil, or for good, in himself? In the first place,
the human being must be characterized as an animal. Linnaeus says that,
on long reflection, he finds nothing special about the human being as an
animal; hence he must add him to the class of the apes. If one wanted to
go on to infer his character from this, it would be unfortunate, for apes are
very malevolent and deceitful animals. (VA-Friedländer 25:675*)
The human being considered as animal is not a predator; he does not have
the claws and jaws of the pure carnivore or the propensity for mauling,
and he lacks the ‘immediate appetite for blood’. When it comes to diet,
he is more likely a vegetarian or, given his dentition and his stomach, a
semi-vegetarian. But ‘with respect to his own species’, when not under
the coercion of civilisation, he is indeed a beast of prey. On the basis
of introspection, Kant thinks, everyone can agree that a man who found
himself on a desert island and who believed himself for a long time to be
alone would be untroubled. But
he would become terrified if he became aware that there was another human
being, for now he would no longer be perfectly safe, now he might have
an enemy who would be more dangerous for him than any wild animal,
since he could in fact save himself from them and outwit them, but not
the human being; for this one can stalk him, observe all his behaviour,
obstruct him, and be dangerous for him in every respect. (VA-Friedländer 25:
678*)
Man is not a herd or hive animal, nor is he a solitary animal. He has
a ‘propensity towards society’, but only on account of his needs and
not through any natural affection for his kind (VA-Mrongovius 25:1416).
Humans come to tolerate one another’s presence only after they discover
they have the same needs. ‘[H]owever, even then one cannot fully trust the
other; one does not know for sure that the other is not plotting against
one’ (VA-Friedländer 25:678*).
Misanthropy is not, however, warranted, for the animalistic traits Kant
describes are in his view providential. They are ladders to the perfection
of civil society that can eventually be thrown away. Nature does nothing
in vain and ‘Nature’s [original] purpose [for humans] was . . . civil society’
(VA-Friedländer 25:690). Scarcity and hardship rouse humans from their
natural indolence and provoke them to develop their skills. However, ‘they
do not serve fully for the development of talents’. This requires human evil –
‘animality combined with freedom’ (VA-Pillau 25:844). In the Friedländer
Lectures, Kant’s adaptationism – his view that what we observe universally
must have, if we can see no immediate cause for it, a hidden purpose –
comes to the fore:10
Since, as it is, [human malevolence] belongs to the universal order of Nature,
although it immediately aims at something evil, it must indirectly have a
purpose. It is a universal rule which one must observe, and which is deeply
philosophical, that one must always search for the purpose and intent of
anything which exists universally in nature . . . for Nature will not produce
such a universal order in vain. (VA-Friedländer 25:679)
Unlike the other animals, humans are intended by Providence (here, unusu-
ally, Gott) to become ubiquitous and to develop culture. Their nastiness
is a precondition for both, and Kant here avails himself of the paradox of
social-good-through-individual-evil invented by Mandeville, who showed
how vice produces (economic) virtue (Mandeville (1714)).11 The transi-
tion from hunting and gathering to agriculture, as Kames and others knew,
resulted in the tremendous growth of populations, and their numerousness
and pugnacity, along with scarcity, drove, and continue to drive, humans
to the far corners of the earth. When they must live together, they develop
both property and theft, law and criminality, the virtues of civilisation
along with its vices:
10 Compare his argument in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals regarding the purpose of the
otherwise inexplicable endowment of human reason at A 4:395.
11 This text appears to have been translated as Anti-Shaftesbury, oder die Entlarvte Eitelkeit der Selbstliebe
und Ruhmsucht (1761), but I have not been able to verify that it is the same work. See Marquard
(1981) on the bonum-durch-malum principal in Kant.
From [the maliciousness of human nature] arise the development of talents,
the concepts of justice and morality, and the development of the greatest
perfection of which people are capable . . . [T]he arts emerge from this; true,
needs grow, yet working these out proves to be a credit to human beings. The
human being refines himself with regard to taste, prosperity and propriety.
All these perfections emerged from the maliciousness of the human spirit
[Gemüth], which first produced civil constraint. (VA-Friedländer 25:680*)
Laziness, cowardice and secretiveness have good consequences; labour and
industry are motivated by the prospect of rest, and our capacity for industry
requires a counterweight to prevent exhaustion. Cowardice protects us from
rash behaviour and dissimulation and hypocrisy from offending others
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1420–1).
Kant agrees with Rousseau that in the state of nature the human being
lives like an animal, more happily and more innocently (VA-Friedländer
25:684–5). He has no concept of social honour, rank, fine dress, food or
court manners, and is spared the effort. He risks losing his life to another
individual, but he does not have to join the army or face enemy soldiers.
‘The wars of the savages are only a temporary storm; by contrast ours are far
more terrible and ruthless, and even peace is a constant armament for war,
so that the preservation and protection of life cost more effort and work
than life is worth’ (VA-Friedländer 25:686–7). However, the happiness and
innocence of the savage are ‘negative’. The Arcadian life of the shepherd
or of the Tahitians makes them no more estimable than any animal species
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1422). The myth of the Fall of Adam is illustrative,
Kant thinks. Adam ‘misused his reason’ because all his wants were fulfilled
in the Garden. He was like a spoiled child (VA-Pillau 25:844). There is
neither vice nor virtue in the state of nature. The human being has not
won his happiness and does not maintain it against the threat of misery,
nor does he maintain his innocence against the threat of corruption:
In the civil state, the human being sacrifices many of the natural advantages,
he sacrifices his freedom in many ways, his carefreeness to achieve his com-
forts; the contentment which arises from the lack of knowledge of greater
needs, a large portion of his health through overexertion of his powers, and
through the wasting away of his life, and through grief, worry, and effort.
He becomes subject to the temptation of vices, he develops desires from the
knowledge of needs, which seduce him into many passions, he comes to
know the moral law, and [at the same time] to feel the incentive to ignore
his duties, and since his capabilities have been aroused, evil will grow in just
the same way as will the good . . . Accordingly, in the civil state, the human
being is not as virtuous and happy as in the natural one. (VA-Friedländer
25:688–9*)
Kant admits that as soon as savages who have been ‘lured into the civil
state’ as servants are given the opportunity, they choose nature and their
freedom (VA-Friedländer 25:687). But he knows that Rousseau himself did
not think we ‘should all head for the woods’ (VA-Friedländer 25:689); he
wanted, rather, to perfect the civil constitution and to show how it could be
united with nature (VA-Friedländer 25:684).12 Where nature can only make
us ‘negatively’ happy and good, the civil state can make us positively happy
and virtuous. This positive happiness will not be the personal, individual
happiness enjoyed by the savage. The civil state produces general happiness
and virtue through coercion, through law and punishment, by means of
‘parents, of the circumstances of making a living, of propriety, of honour’
(VA-Friedländer 25:690). These are spurs to ‘industry and diligence’ that
overcome the human being’s natural laziness and force him to furnish
goods to others.
Where Henry Home thought that the late eighteenth century was a
happy intermediate state between savagery and decadence, Kant finds the
intermediate state rather miserable. We have lost the happiness and inno-
cence of the state of nature but have not yet realised the perfection of
civil society, which will be ‘a society of equal beings’ in which all practical
conditions are met (VA-Friedländer 25:690). Rousseau ‘shows in general
that in us lie the germs for cultivation toward our vocation; and we have
need of a civil constitution on this account, in order to fulfil the end of
nature’ (VA-Pillau 25:847). ‘Such a [political] state still does not in fact
exist, yet by means of many revolutions which still must take place, it is to
be hoped for.’ If it does not come about, ‘then we have still lost more than
we have gained’ (VA-Friedländer 25:692*). Kant seems to endorse the claim
he ascribes to Rousseau, namely that ‘if we stop with the civil constitution
we have now, then it would be better to return to the estate of wildness’
(VA-Pillau 25:847).
Kant now ponders whether the perfection of the civil state should come
from the top down, starting with the establishment of a perfect constitu-
tion, or whether effort should be directed towards perfecting individuals
through education. Like Rousseau, he opts for the latter, for the rulers are
currently educated by ‘corrupted persons’ (VA-Friedländer 25:696). Some
12 Kant does not acknowledge the Rousseau of the Social Contract, who argues that, under civilisation,
‘The faculties [of the human being] are exercised and developed, his ideas broadened, his feelings
ennobled, and his whole soul is elevated to such a point that if the abuses of his new condition
did not often degrade him beneath the condition he left, he ought ceaselessly to bless the happy
moment that tore him away from it forever, and that changed him from a stupid, limited animal
into an intelligent being and a man’ (Rousseau (1990), Volume 4, 141; Rousseau (1964), Volume 3,
364).
of the ills of his age, besides bad education, cited by Kant are the volition of
kings, the absence of utility in the sciences, and the pre-eminence of taste
and fashion over real worth. ‘To date we are only refined and polished, but
we lack what constitutes a good citizen. As for morality, we can say that we
have not gotten very far’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1427). But human beings have
managed to produce by themselves the refinements of culture in the form
of manners, cleanliness, ‘taste, modesty, refinement, courtesy, and deco-
rum’ (VA-Friedländer 25:692), and they can presumably lift themselves out
of their moral laxness as well.
Civil society enforces moral constraint through the judgment of others.
This, Kant says, is more effective in producing ‘lived morality’ than is
religion. It is social judgment that leads people to kill themselves rather
than suffer to disgrace in the eyes of others (VA-Friedländer 25:694). The
force of reputation requires further development, however, as it does not
currently operate to the same extent as social and legal coercions. Kant
envisions a society in which people have come to shun the corrupt and to
evaluate those who seek office by their character rather than by conduct or
skill (VA-Friedländer 25:693). Yet, declaring his rejection of the view that
the judgment of our fellows, an external constraint, is and ought to be
the main incentive to virtue, Kant insists that moral development requires
as well the development of individual conscience, which is in most cases
‘opiated’:
If [conscience] were cultivated, then this constraint, since it is an inner

one, would be the strongest, and then nothing more would be needed. We
actually have a predisposition for this in us [given to us] by Providence,
insofar as everyone judges himself, and judges others around him as well.
Therefore Providence has really made us judges, only we do not express our
moral judgments, because no moral establishment has as yet been instituted.
(VA-Friedländer 25:693*)
Children ought to be brought up to feel the same inner repulsion to lies

as they do to spiders, merely by observing the shudder of their nurse (VA-
Friedländer 25:695). Kant is somewhat unclear about the role of religion
in developing conscience. ‘Conscience is the deity’s vicar.’ But morality
ought not to depend on whether Heaven and Hell exist outside the world
History, for Kant is not a long story of the Fall and the wait for a
Redeemer. Nor is it the subject of the degeneration narratives of the clas-
sical theorists of the golden age and of the Rousseau of the Discourses.
Nor is history, as Pierre Bayle suggested, nothing but ‘a collection of the
crimes and misfortunes of mankind’, simply one sanguinary episode after
another (Bayle (1738), 7:400). History, for Kant, is on a one-way, upwards
trajectory, despite appearances. In this regard, there are similarities with
and differences to the Leibnizian theodicy. Leibniz’s ‘static’ defense of the
goodness of the world, based largely on the beauty of physics and the
intricacy and beauty of organisms, together with his claim that evil is such
in appearance only, are left behind. Evil, one might say, is scientifically
real for Kant, rooted in our species-nature. Kant’s version of the good-
world doctrine is dynamic, but to this extent it draws on the Leibnizian
metaphors of growth and unfolding, updated with eighteenth-century life
science, especially embryology.
Kant’s references to Keime and Analagen – seeds and predispositions –
and to the Vorsicht or Vorsehung – Providence – that has implanted them
resurface in his published essays. The former afford a middle route between
monogenesis and polygenesis. Africans, Asians, Americans and Europeans
are all of the same interbreeding species, but different racial characteristics
existing in potentia are elicited by different environments (VvRM 2:427–
44). Mental and moral characteristics similarly exist in potentia and can be
developed:
Just as an embryo must become a man, so must everything rise up to its
full perfection. Innate to human nature are germs which develop and which
can achieve the perfection for which they are determined . . . Should one
who has seen a savage Indian or Greenlander really believe that there is a
germ innate to him to become a Parisian man of fashion just as much as
anyone else? He has, however, the same germs as a civilized human being,
only they are not yet developed. We equally have reason to believe that there
are germs for greater perfection innate to human nature, which could well
be developed, and [that] humanity must achieve the degree of perfection
for which it is determined, and for which it has the germs within itself, and
[that] it will be transported into the condition which is the best possible.
(VA-Friedländer 25:694*)
The perfection of civil society may be a long time in coming, but the
advances of the past thousand years indicate, Kant says, that ‘great changes
are to be hoped for’ (VA-Friedländer 25:694). Ideally, there will be an end
to war, the formation of a league of nations to decide all disputes, and
the diversion of military resources to social improvement (VA-Friedländer
25:696). But are political utopia and the perfection of manners, taste, moral
judgment and conscience an empirically well-founded hope, an obligatory
hope or a mere hope? Kant does not differentiate clearly between these
possibilities.
Despite his statement in Friedländer Lectures that the Indian and the
Greenlander have the same seeds of the urban dandy as every other human
being, Kant expressed the view in 1772 that there would not be much further
development outside Europe. The native Americans will not develop. They
will simply ‘die out’; only a twentieth part of the American population
remains,13 and while they have been exploited by Europeans, Kant admits,
this is not the cause of their decline. The Negroes will not develop either.
The Chinese and Indians will not develop further than they have, for
although they have art and ‘an analogue to science’, they ‘lack spirit’.
The Greeks, however, were paradigms of development, and Germany has
received their spirit (VA-Pillau 25:843). Kant’s views are no different ten
years later. The Americans lack affect, passion and culture, and are lazy. As
for the Negro race,
one could say, [it] is exactly the opposite of the American; they are full of
affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They acquire culture, but
only a culture of slaves; that is, they allow themselves to be trained. They
have many incentives, are also sensitive, afraid of beatings, and also do many
things out of honor. (Menschenkunde 25:1187)
The Chinese and Indians are also going nowhere. Kant has a more difficult
time to show why the Asians will not develop, insofar as Asian government
and manufacture were recognised in his time as superior to European.
Kant addresses this problem in 1781–2, by dividing Asians into Hindus,
who lack the capacity for abstraction and are not going anywhere, and the
white ‘Orientals’ (Menschenkunde 25:1187–8). ‘The white race’, by contrast,
‘contains all incentives and talents in itself ’ (Menschenkunde 25:1188), and
it will presumably spearhead the drive to cultural and moral perfection.14
Kant’s racism is accordingly less than incidental to his philosophy,
though curiously at odds with his universal Keime theory. The under-
lying thought, if there is one, might be that if there were no purpose to
the enslavement and extermination of certain races, Providence would not
favour the spread and domination of the Europeans. The same problem
affects Kant’s view of women. Women and Africans are described in similar
terms, as talkative, vain, sensitive and responsive to honour (VA-Friedländer
25:543; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1187). Women are necessary – nature cannot
13 Smallpox was largely responsible for the devastation of American populations; see Diamond (1999),
192–5.
14 Kleingeld (2007) argues that, in the 1790s, Kant radically revised his views on race. In Perpetual
Peace (1795) Kant decries the subjugation of native populations by military means and its attendant
evils. But the corresponding obligation of other regions to be ‘hospitable’ to Europeans is consistent
with belief in a teleology of nature that would end with European-led pacification and governance.
extinguish them as the weaker parties – but they cannot develop either.
The Friedländer Lectures explain that women do not act on principle but
for reasons of social status. They are not oriented to the future and the
purposes of things and therefore cannot plan or manage their affairs. They
must keep up appearances because of their socio-economic dependency and
therefore they cannot make the sacrifices morality requires (VA-Friedländer
25:719–22).15 ‘Women are such that they cannot do without a leader; just as
they cannot even go out on the street without a guide, they also need one
in all their affairs’ (VA-Friedländer 25:543*). Though aimless themselves,
they generate ongoing conflict: ‘The female temperament occasions strife
and war’, punctuated by reconciliation and unity (VA-Friedländer 25:714).
The battle of the sexes seems to hold out no prospect for perpetual peace.
In this regard, Kant stands apart from a number of his contemporaries,
who considered women and non-Europeans candidates for development
and who took social progress to imply the broadening of entitlements
and benefits. Condorcet was soon to declare that women were entitled to
citizenship (Condorcet (1790)). Kant’s friend Theodor von Hippel wrote
a popular tract defending the social equality of women (Hippel (1774)).
Home questioned whether there was really an inferiority in the understand-
ing of the Negroes, suggesting that its appearance might be ‘occasioned by
their condition’. The cultivation of the female mind, he said, ‘would add
greatly to the happiness of the males and still more to the females’ (Home
(2007), Volume 1, 301). Where Kant takes it as a given that human beings
are kind to young women but not to old ones (VA-Friedländer 25:619),
Home sees this as a problem. With education and the employment of
the latter’s mental faculties, ‘The respect of men for women would then
continue into old age when beauty is lost . . . Mutual esteem would be to
each a school of urbanity’ (Home (2007), Volume 1, 302).
Kant is often regarded as a philosopher for whom autonomy and free-
dom are central concepts. For the modern reader, ‘autonomy’ connotes
an individual’s right to determine the course of their own lives and the
responsibility to live morally for reasons independent of the forces of social
and legal coercion and empty promises of punishment and reward in the
afterlife. Autonomy is not, however, emphasised in the Lectures on Anthro-
pology.16
15 See Brandt’s description (Brandt 1999) of Kant’s misogyny as ‘untameable’ and propagated to
students for a quarter of a century.
16 ‘Spontaneity’ is mentioned only once, though as a fundamental attribute of the concept of the self.
‘Spontaneity also results from it [the concept], for when I say, I act, I am not moved’ (VA-Friedländer
25:473).
The notion that ‘freedom’ should not be considered a metaphysical
attribute of all persons, but consists in freedom of movement and freedom
from coercion by others, originates with Hobbes (who of course allows
for coercion by agreement) and Locke. This ‘embodied’ notion of freedom
was amplified by the new animalism and the concerns over colonial slavery.
Rousseau writes dramatically of the basic desire of human and nonhuman
animals to be free in this sense:
when I see Animals born free and despising captivity break their heads
against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked
savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword
and death, to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behove
Slaves to reason about liberty. (Rousseau (1990), Volume 4, 57; Rousseau
(1964), 181)
The docility of civilised nations, he says, does not prove ‘the natural dis-
position of mankind for or against slavery’; we should rather take note of
‘the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression’
(ibid.). As Buffon says, in considering the domesticated animal, ‘We must
separate what is natural for them from what they are made to do; and never
confound the animal with the slave, the beast of burden with the creature
of God’ (Buffon (1797), Volume 5, 755)
Kant agrees. ‘Most animals have an insurmountable propensity toward
freedom . . . The enslaved human being will become degraded. but once
freed, he will quickly help himself up’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1354). ‘He will’,
Kant assures us, ‘surely learn to use his powers, just as someone who is
bound cannot walk so long as he is bound, yet when released is able to
walk’ (VA-Mrongovius 25:1300). Yet while Kant professes the same antipa-
thy as Rousseau to the condition of slavery, his rejection of the thesis
of natural goodness is so powerful that his call for a release from the
condition of immaturity is limited by his thesis that man, in his present
condition and unlike the animals, needs a master (VA-Mrongovius 25:1419;
VA-Menschenkunde 25:1200). The uncontrolled passions of ‘the rabble’
mean that coercion is absolutely required. ‘In the civil condition man
grows straight like the tree in the forest because he is hemmed in on all
sides and because other trees rob it of sun and branches.’ Freedom with-
out laws and force is the freedom of savages and nomads (VA-Mrongovius
25:1425).
Kant recognises that the need for coercion is problematic. The inclina-
tion to dominate which so frequently produces actual domination is itself
a product of evil wills:
The mania for dominance is found in everyone. The stronger always
oppresses the weaker if he can do so. We find that everywhere in history.
Even children possess it. For they dominate animals. It is a lot of trouble for
the master and where does this drive in humans come from? From love of
freedom. We are worried that the other might begin to dominate us and that
we might lose our freedom; for that reason we try to assure our safety [spielen
wir das sicherste] and we ourselves dominate. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1358*)
Who, then, will suffer himself to be mastered and who will master the
masters?
What, then, should we make of Kant with regard to his views on culture,
civilisation and moralisation? And what light do the Lectures throw on
Kant’s moral philosophy? The views Kant expressed over twenty-five years
of lecturing are generally consistent with the challenges to Rousseau and
Herder as proponents of natural man in Kant’s later essays (see Zammito
(2002); Wilson (1998)), while the extended meditations on the need for a
transcendence both of animality and of mere social convention throw light
on Kant’s demand for metaphysical foundations for morality. Alas, however,
the Lectures have little to say about the essential dignity of human beings,
their intrinsic equality as members of a single species, and the irrelevance to
their worth of their social roles and economic circumstances. Not only does
Kant fail to mention the duty of benevolence, he also regards a concern for
universal welfare (Wohlwollen gegen das ganze menschliche Geschlecht) as a
harmful delusion. Of the critics of civilisation he says, ‘Such enthusiasts are
not malicious people, but they are touched with principles of benevolence
toward the entire human race, and since they cannot find such, they
become misanthropes, for example, Rousseau, and are taken to be absurd’
(VA-Friedländer 25:530). It is unnerving to find Kant himself lecturing
his students year after year on their cruelty, hypocrisy, and irrationality.
The human being, he informs them, is full of ‘jealousy, mistrust, violence,
propensity for enmity against those outside the family’ (VA-Friedländer
25:679). What is repeatedly stressed in the Lectures is the need for discipline,
control, coercion (Zwang). This is a strange presentation for an opponent
of misanthropy, and it far exceeds anything to be met with in Hobbes
who, almost 150 years earlier, was excoriated on the basis of a very few lines
regarding the tendencies of natural man.
It might be argued that, from the perspective of Kant’s system as a
whole, these vacancies and amplifications are deliberate. The metaphysics
of morals is the complement of anthropology and not continuous with it.
Through elaborate and essentially unprecedented strategies of philosophi-
cal argumentation, Kant demands recognition of non-empirical normative
posits, such as free will and a capacity to recognise and respond to the
good, which are necessary precisely because the empirical study of man
provides almost no hint of their existence. However, the picture is more
complicated. It is difficult fully to concur with Kant’s argument, empha-
sised in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (G 4:395–6; see Wood
(2000)), that personal happiness, though a natural aim, does not matter
where morality is concerned and is best left to animals and savages. The
universalisation test for moral permissibility appears less a product of a
concern for the well-being of all than a form of much-needed Zwang for
inconstant man.
The eighteenth century’s ‘torrent of tears’ for humanity (Fusil (1930),
176), which washes over the writings of Rousseau, Diderot, Raynal and the
French Encyclopedists, is not to be found in Kant. ‘Crying is decidedly
womanish’ (VA-Friedländer 25:602). The universal satisfaction of needs
as the aim of cultural development does not come high on Kant’s list.
One cannot, he says, think of a civil constitution without inequality (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1419). The pacifism of the Encyclopedists and of the Abbé
St Pierre, with his detailed proposals for a pan-European police force in
place of national armies, eventually to be extended across the globe, was
dealt a hard setback in Kant’s deferral of perpetual peace to a future perhaps
thousands of years away, to which Providence would see.
By way of charitable interpretation it is important to remember what
Kant was striving to accomplish and what he felt he was up against. He
entered into the study of anthropology and applied himself to the dis-
semination of his views amongst the young with several aims in mind.
One aim was simply to contribute to the articulation, so popular in the
second half of the eighteenth century, of taxonomies and differentiations –
races, characters, sexes, stages of humanity. A second aim was to address
the question of the extent to which the human being is understandable
as an animal like any other whose behaviour is driven by instincts and
external incentives, and to what extent this being is understandable as one
that has acquired power over its instincts and temptations and can exercise
non-animal capabilities. A third aim was to contribute to the formation of
a secular image of human beings. Their existence, moral motivation and
ultimate destiny, Kant wanted to show, are fully conceivable without refer-
ence to a divinity with personal characteristics, including moral standards
and demands, and without reference to the natural goodness of man as
a substitute for a divinity. Rousseau declared, ‘It would be sad for us to
agree that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty [perfectibility] is the
source of all man’s misfortunes’ (Rousseau (1990), Volume 4, 26; Rousseau
(1964), 142). In reply to Rousseau, Kant proposed his own paradoxes: the
cruelty of human beings will bring about their civil perfection through dis-
cipline and coercion, and the seeds of moral conscience lie sleeping in the
malevolent and passionate animal, waiting to be prodded from dormancy
into growth.
c hap ter 12
Cosmopolitical unity: the final destiny

of the human species
Robert B. Louden
That there is a cosmopolitical predisposition [eine cosmopolitische

Anlage] in the human species, even with all the wars, which grad-
ually in the course of political matters wins the upper hand over the
selfish predispositions of people.
(Marginal note in Kant’s Handschrift for Anthropology from a
Pragmatic Point of View 7:412)
From the mid-1770s onward and toward the very end of his presentation,
we find a chapter on the character of the human species as a whole in all
but one of Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology.1 What are Kant’s main points
in this important concluding discussion? How did his thinking on this
topic develop, and what influenced it? What should we today make of
his bold claims, particularly as regards humanity’s alleged predisposition
toward “cosmopolitical unity” (see A 7:333)? These are the questions that I
wish to address in what follows.
Friedländer (1775–6) is the earliest anthropology transcription to include
a chapter on the character of the human species.2 While it is not the final
An earlier version of this chapter was presented as an invited lecture at the xiv Colóquio Kant da
UNICAMP in Campinas, Brazil, in August 2012. I would like to thank my hosts Andrea Faggion
and José Oscar de Almeida Marques for their very generous invitation, audience members for their
insightful questions, and Alexandre Hahn for his work on the Portuguese translation of my essay.
Thanks also to Georg Cavallar, for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.
1 VA-Busolt (1788–9), the last of the transcriptions included in Academy Volume 25, is the exception.
But the editors note that this text “breaks off” in the chapter entitled “On the Characteristic of
the Person” (VA-Busolt 25:1531n6), and in the extremely short “Doctrine of Method” chapter that
precedes it the transcriber notes that the character of the human being divides into “the character of
the person, of sex, of a people, and finally the character of the species” (VA-Busolt 25:1530). We can
infer from this remark that Busolt too, if it had not broken off, would have ended with a chapter on
the character of the human species.
2 However, Kant’s earlier Lectures on Physical Geography, which form part of the background for
his Lectures on Anthropology, also include discussions about human beings. For instance, Holstein
(1757–9), the earliest of the published geography lectures, includes a section called “Of the Human
Being” (V-PG 26:85–102), as does the better-known version of the lectures edited by Rink (PG
9:311–20 – the two sections are virtually identical). But Kant’s discussions of human beings in
211
212 Robert B. Louden
chapter of the manuscript,3 “On the Character of Humanity in General”
(25:675–97), at twenty-two Academy pages, is also Kant’s longest discussion
of this topic. Many important themes connected to the character and
destiny of the human species are discussed in Friedländer, but let us start
with our focal point, cosmopolitics. Toward the very end of the chapter,
Kant states:
In order, however, that all wars would not be necessary, a league of nations
[Völkerbund] would thus have to arise, where all nations [alle Völker] con-
stituted a universal senate through their delegates, [where] all disputes of
nations would have to be decided, and this judgment would have to be
executed through the power of the nations [Macht der Völker]; then the
nations would also be subject to one forum [foro] and one civil constraint.
This senate of nations would be the most enlightened that the world has
ever seen. (VA-Friedländer 25:696)
This passage is noteworthy in part because it depicts a stronger version of
nature’s “hidden plan,” viz. the bringing about of “a universal cosmopolitan
condition [ein allgemeiner weltbürgerlicher Zustand]” (Idea 8:27, 28, original
emphasis), than one finds later in Kant’s most famous text on this topic,
Toward Perpetual Peace (1795). In the latter work Kant offers no solid
details concerning exactly how states are to resolve their disagreements
with each other, whereas in Friedländer – in a manner reminiscent of
Saint-Pierre’s call for a “permanent machinery for arbitration” and a union
that would possess sufficient collective force to restrain any “party wishing
to renege on his promise” (Williams (1999), 357, 359; see also Louden
(2007b), 93–106) – Kant explicitly advocates a senate of nations creating
a forum with sufficient Macht to enforce its decisions. Also, the political
model sketched by Kant in the Friedländer Lectures is clearly a universal
one requiring the membership of alle Völker, whereas in Perpetual Peace
Kant envisions only a voluntary league limited to republics, albeit one that
the Geography Lectures focus primarily on physical characteristics allegedly influenced by climate
(see, e.g., V-PG 26:90, PG 9:314), while those in the anthropology lectures range over biology,
history, politics, morality, international law, religion, and more. Nevertheless, as I have argued
elsewhere (Louden (2011), 124–8), in the end it is difficult to draw a bright, clear line between Kant’s
discussions of human beings in the geography and anthropology lectures. Menschenkunde (1781–2),
for instance, includes a notorious chapter entitled “There are Four Races on Earth; These Are” (VA-
Menschenkunde 25:1187–8), and yet later in the same transcription Kant remarks that the “difference
of races” is a topic “whose special character belongs to physical geography” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1195; cf. A 7:120).
3 Part of the explanation here concerns Kant’s intense but short-lived interest in Basedow’s
Philanthropin, an educational experiment that began in 1774 – i.e. one year before the Friedländer
lecture was delivered. Friedländer is the only anthropology transcription to conclude with a chapter
called “On Education” (VA-Friedländer 25:722–8).
Cosmopolitical unity 213
he predicts “should gradually extend over all states” (EF 8:356; cf. 354).
Although Kant does not explicitly mention Saint-Pierre in Friedländer,4 it
is certain that he was familiar with Saint-Pierre’s Plan for Perpetual Peace in
Europe by this time. For in the Kaehler lecture on moral philosophy (1774–
5), Kant states, “The Abbe de Saint-Pierre’s proposal for a general senate
of nations [allgemeinen VolkerSenat] would, if carried out, be the moment
at which the human race would take a great step towards perfection”
(Kant (2004), 366; cf. VMo-Collins 27:470). However, an even stronger
influence on Kant’s thinking about cosmopolitanism during the mid-1770s
was the educational reformer Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90). The
final chapter in Friedländer is entitled “On Education,” and in it Basedow’s
Philanthropin Institute, established in Dessau in 1774, is declared to be
“the greatest phenomenon which has appeared in this century for the
improvement of the perfection of humanity” (VA-Friedländer 25:722–3).
Basedow, a cosmopolitan educational reformer who taught his students
to become “true citizens of our world” (Basedow (1776), 15), strongly
influenced Kant’s own belief that the proper “design for a plan of education
must be cosmopolitical [kosmopolitisch]” and that teachers must instill
“cosmopolitan dispositions” (weltbürgerliche Gesinnungen) in their students
(VP 9:448, 499).
But Basedow’s educational cosmopolitanism (and he is by no means
the only example of this tendency) was not directly political. He did
not have an international political agenda; he did not advocate a world-
political ideal. He was, so to speak, cosmopolitan but not cosmopolitical.5
Kant’s anthropological conception of the character and destiny of the
human species, even in the relatively early, Basedow-influenced Friedländer
transcription, definitely includes a strong political component. What are
central elements of this conception, and how do they jointly support
nature’s ultimate aim, cosmopolitical unity?
1. Nature’s purposes
Anchoring Kant’s anthropological inquiry into the character and destiny of
the human species is his teleological perspective on nature as a whole. All
natural organisms, humans most definitely included, are to be understood
4 In the Lectures on Anthropology, Saint-Pierre’s name first occurs in the Pillau transcription of 1777–8
(VA-Pillau 25:764, 767).
5 For further discussion of the distinction between cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics, see Kleingeld
(2012), esp. 38–9. For discussion of Basedow’s influence on Kant, see Louden (2012) and Cavallar
(2012).
as having inherent goals and purposes. Nothing in nature “is in vain,
purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (KU 5:376;
cf. 379). In the Anthropology Lectures and related writings on human nature,
we find this assertion repeatedly. For instance, in Friedländer Kant stresses
the importance to his audience of “a universal rule which one must observe,
and which is very philosophical, that one must always search for the end and
intent [den Zweck und die Absicht] of something which exists universally
in nature” (VA-Friedländer 25:679). And nine years later, in Mrongovius
(1784–5): “Every creature reaches its destiny in the world, i.e., reaches
the time in which all of its natural predispositions are developed and
come to maturity” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1417–18). In the published text of
the Anthropology this thought is echoed in Kant’s remark that “one can
assume as a principle that nature wants every creature to reach its destiny
through the appropriate development of all predispositions of its nature”
(A 7:329).
Kant’s double assumption that (1) all biological creatures have inherent
purposes and (2) these purposes will eventually be realized (“in nature
everything is designed to achieve its greatest possible perfection” (VA-
Friedländer 25:694)) also provides a major portion of the “guiding thread”
in Kant’s writings on the philosophy of history.6 For instance, the first
proposition in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim reads:
“All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop
themselves completely and purposively” (Idea 8:18, original emphasis). And
even when he is discussing the character of the human being, the only
terrestrial animal that “has a character, which he himself creates” (A 7:321),
Kant’s teleological biology perspective threatens to cancel out the free choice
that he attributes to the human animal: “Just as a man must develop from
an embryo, so also must everything [muß . . . alles] rise up to its perfection.
In human nature lie germs which develop and can [können] achieve the
perfection for which they are determined” (VA-Friedländer 25:694). Must?
Can? The modality of his pronouncements concerning humanity’s future
sometimes shifts abruptly within a single sentence.
The details and implications of Kant’s teleological commitments, while
important for assessing his philosophy of biology, are beyond the scope
of this chapter.7 As regards their role in his anthropological writings, the
main point to emphasize is that they enable Kant to inject both descrip-
tive and prescriptive dimensions into his account of human nature. As I
6 In part for this reason, Brandt and Stark call Kant’s philosophy of history “a component of anthro-
pology” (Brandt and Stark (1997), 25:liii). See also Sturm (2009), 355–6.
7 Recent discussions include Huneman (2007) and Zuckert (2007).
have stressed previously, Kant’s anthropology “is not merely a descriptive
account of human culture. Rather, his aim is to offer the species a moral
map that they can use to move toward their collective destiny” (Louden
(2000), 106).8 In pointing to natural, developmental structures within
human beings, Kant is able simultaneously to describe what is presently
the case as well as what, in the future, ought to be the case.
2. Keime and Anlagen

A key component in Kant’s teleological orientation toward human nature
and its development is his frequent use of the related terms Keime (“germs”)
and Anlagen (“predispositions”). In Kant’s view, the nature and character of
each biological species is explainable by reference to its unique set of germs
and predispositions. As he states in On the Use of Teleological Principles in
Philosophy (1788):
I myself derive all organization from organic beings (through generation)
and all later forms (of this kind of natural things) from laws of the gradual
development of original predispositions [ursprüngliche Anlagen], which were
to be found in the organization of its phylum. (ÜGTP 8:179, original
emphasis)
Keime and Anlagen, which appear to be used interchangeably in his less
technical anthropological discussions of human development,9 refer to
inheritable tendencies within the species whose full actualization is contin-
gent upon favorable environmental factors.
Once we discover the Keime and Anlagen of the human species, we
will know our inherent potentialities, and we will also know what areas
of human life need to be attended to in order to help us achieve our
potential. As Kant states in his Lectures on Pedagogy: “Many Keime lie
within humanity, and now it is our business to develop the Naturanlagen
proportionately and to unfold humanity from its Keime and to make
it happen that the human being reaches his destiny” (VP 9:445). It is
“our business . . . to make it happen” – i.e. even when we know what our
Keime and Anlagen are, we need to also create the right environment for
8 Cf. Louden (2011), 76–7; Wilson (2006), 95; Zöller (2011), 140.
9 In Of the Different Races of Human Beings (1775), Kant distinguishes between the two as follows:
“The grounds of a determinate unfolding which are lying in the nature of an organic body (plant or
animal) are called Keime, if this unfolding concerns particular parts; if, however, it concerns only the
size of the relation of the parts to one another, then I call them natürliche Anlagen” (VvRM 2:434).
However, as is evident in many of the passages cited in the present section, Kant does not adhere to
this distinction in his more informal anthropological texts.
them to develop properly. As he remarks at the beginning of the same set
of lectures: “the human species is supposed to bring out, little by little,
humanity’s entire Naturanlage by means of its own effort” (VP 9:441).
Similarly, in a Reflexion he notes that knowledge of our natural Anlagen
“teaches at the same time how we should work on ourselves in agreement
with the most complete ends of nature” (Ref 1467, 15:646). And again, in
the Menschenkunde: “the discovery of what kinds of Keime lie hidden in
humanity gives us at the same time the means that we have to apply in
order to hasten the unfolding of these natural Anlagen” (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1195).
Prolonged and focused effort on the part of humans is thus needed to
fully develop their biological Keime and Anlagen, but there is also a luck
factor as well. All individual members of the species share the same inherent
capacities, but some human beings are not in the appropriate environment
to see their capacities developed. As Kant notes in Friedländer: “a savage
Indian or Greenlander . . . has the same Keime as a civilized human being,
only they are not yet developed” (VA-Friedländer 25:694; see also VA-
Menschenkunde 25:857).10
What are the appropriate external conditions under which humans’
Keime and Anlagen are most likely to fully develop? At the most basic
level, a physically challenging environment will serve as a spur to human
development. As Kant states in Pillau: “The hardships of life are the incen-
tives [Triebfedern] for the development of talents” (VA-Pillau 25:844). And
similarly, in Mrongovius: “pain [Schmerz] for the human being is a spur to
activity” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1417). But (as Kant implies in the remark cited
earlier about Indians and Greenlanders) a civilized environment will also
further the development of human capacities. In Mrongovius, for instance,
he notes that the civilized state (gesittete Zustand), “which, however, we do
not yet know,” is also the one “where all of the Keime of the human being
will have been developed” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1417). But the single most
important external factor that Kant draws attention to is a proper civil
constitution: “the point in time when the talents of the human being can
properly develop actually only arises in a civil constitution [bürgerlichen
Verfassung]” (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1199). This achievement, too, is part
of our biological potential, but it is also our business to make it happen.
I discuss in more detail the precise nature and configuration of this civil
constitution below.
10 But see also “struggle versus enjoyment” below. Kant is not consistent on this point. He does not
believe that the Anlage to work and to struggle is evenly distributed among the human population.
Finally, what are humanity’s most important inherent capacities? As
we have seen, Kant is often exasperatingly vague on this issue. “Many
Keime” lie within us, and it is our job to develop them (VP 9:445). And
not all of our Keime are good. For instance, “nature has planted” in us
“the Keim of discord” (A 7:322) – we are often at each other’s throats.
And the transcriber of Mrongovius notes at one point: “There are three
NaturAnlagen in the human being: 1) laziness, 2) cowardice, and 3) falsity”
(VA-Mrongovius 25:1420; cf. Ref 1522, 15:894). But as we shall see later, good
will eventually arise even out of the development of humanity’s bad Keime.
This, too, is part of nature’s plan. The three predispositions that receive
top billing in the printed version of the Anthropology are our technical,
pragmatic, and moral Anlagen, each one of which serves to distinguish us
from other terrestrial animals: “Among the living inhabitants of the earth
the human being is markedly distinguished from all other living beings by
his technical Anlage . . . by his pragmatic Anlage, and by the moral Anlage in
his being” (A 7:322, original emphasis). Our cosmopolitsiche Anlage, which
Kant refers to in a marginal note in the Handschrift to the Anthropology (see
opening epigraph) is not, strictly speaking, a member of this core trinity,
but it is nevertheless only through its realization that our destiny can be
fulfilled. The development of our cosmopolitical predisposition is a means
to realizing our moral predisposition.
By means of the crucial concepts of Keime and Anlagen, Kant is able
simultaneously to set biological limits on human development, to account
for human unity and diversity (through our shared potential but also our
different interactions with the external environment), and to map out our
future potential.
3. Bestimmung
Another key component in Kant’s analysis of the character of the human
species, already present in the title of this essay and in many of the previous
citations, is the concept of “destiny” (Bestimmung). Many German Enlight-
enment authors wrote on this important theme,11 and Reinhard Brandt, in
his exhaustive study Die Bestimmung des Menschen bei Kant, goes as far as to
call it “the leading center [das dirigierende Zentrum] of Kantian philosophy”
(Brandt (2007), 7; cf. Brandt (2003), 85–7). On Kant’s view, every creature
has a Bestimmung, which consists in “the appropriate development of all
11 For a representative survey of German Enlightenment texts on der Mensch und seine Bestimmung,
see Ciafardone (1990), 39–119.
Anlagen of its nature” (A 7:329). At bottom, Kant’s notion of Bestimmung
is reminiscent of Aristotle’s teleological accounts of natural organisms. We
explain natural phenomena by appealing to “that for the sake of which” (to
tou heneka) – viz. the natural goal or end (telos) to which each biological
organism is directed (see, e.g., Parts of Animals i.1 639b12–21).
However, the German word Bestimmung can be translated in English
variously as “destiny,” “vocation,” and “determination,” and I think Kant’s
use of the term – particularly in its anthropological contexts – intention-
ally incorporates all three meanings. And because of this intended triple
meaning, it poses an immense challenge for translators. There is no sin-
gle word in English that captures all three meanings. The Bestimmung of
a plant involves no planning, deliberation, or free choice on the part of
the plant, and here “determination” might suffice as a translation. A plant
is biologically designed to develop in a certain manner, and if it receives
sufficient water, light, nutrients, etc., it will reach its natural Bestimmung.
As Kant remarks in his Lectures on Pedagogy: “nature has after all placed
the Keime in these plants, and it is merely a matter of proper sowing and
planting that these Keime develop in the plants. The same holds true [so
auch] with human beings” (VP 9:445). Nature has placed certain Keime
in both humans and plants, and in both cases their natural Bestimmung
is reached if and when their specific Keime are properly developed. Both
types of organism will reach biological maturity with “proper sowing and
planting.” But part of our human Bestimmung involves openness and free
choice, and so “determination” alone will not work as a translation. Again,
the human being “has a character which he himself creates [den er sich
selbst schafft]” (A 7:321), and this too is part of our Bestimmung. Our Bes-
timmung in fact includes Unbestimmtheit (indetermination). In describing
the dexterity of the human hand, for instance, Kant writes: “by this means
nature has made the human being not suited for one way of manipulating
things but undetermined for every way [unbestimmt für alle], consequently
suited for the use of reason” (A 7:323). Humans, as biological animals,
have a built-in indeterminacy that is absent in other terrestrial beings. At
some point in the distant past, a crucial discontinuity occurred between
humans and other terrestrial animals. The human being “discovered in
himself a faculty of choosing for himself a way of living and not being
bound to a single one, as other animals are” (MA 8:112). This openness
and indeterminacy, when combined with our inherent capacities of reflec-
tion, deliberation, and free choice, implies that realizing our Bestimmung
requires work and effort on our part: “The human being should have to
owe everything to his own efforts. This is . . . a great honor that nature has
bestowed on us” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1417). Our Bestimmung is thus also
a vocation, a calling. As humans, “we feel determined/destined/called by
nature [von der Natur bestimmt] to [develop] . . . into a cosmopolitan society”
(A 7:331, original emphasis). And if there really is a cosmopolitische Anlage
within us, this part of our Bestimmung, too, is part of our biological inher-
itance. But it will take an inordinate amount of effort and planning on the
part of humans (not to mention good luck) to bring it about.
Our freedom is thus also part of the biology of our peculiar species, and
this, too, is part of nature’s plan: “nature does not proceed without a plan
or final aim [nicht ohne Plan und Endabsicht] even in the play of human
freedom” (Idea 8:29).
4. Species/individual
A further difference between the Bestimmung of humans and that of other
terrestrial creatures is that in the latter case each individual member of
the species normally attains the complete Bestimmung, whereas in the case
of humans only the species as a whole reaches it. As Kant remarks in the
published Anthropology:
with all other animals left to themselves, each individual reaches its complete
Bestimmung; however, with the human being only the species, at best, reaches
it; so that the human race can work its way up to its Bestimmung only
through progress in a series of immeasurably many generations. (A 7:324,
original emphasis)12
Humans are able to build on and improve upon the cultural and scientific
achievements of their predecessors – each generation “always adds some-
thing to the enlightenment of the previous one, and thus it makes the next
generation more perfectly endowed than it was” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1417).
In the case of other terrestrial animals, even in those that appear to
exhibit some rudimentary cultural behavior (see, e.g., Whiten et al. (1999)),
we do not find this progressive or cumulative sense of culture. Birds, for
instance, as both Kant and many contemporary researchers hold, “do not
sing by instinct, but actually learn [wirklich lernen]” (VP 9:443);13 one bird
imparts the song to another “through instruction [durch Belehrung] (like
a tradition)” (A 7:323n). To this minimal extent, they have culture. But
birds keep singing the same songs; their songs do not exhibit the kind of
development found in human musical traditions (not to mention science).
In Pillau, Kant illustrates this crucial difference by reference to bees:
12 Cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1196; Ref 1499, 15:781; VP 9:445.

13 Cf. VA-Mrongovius 25:1416; Ref 1521, 15:886; Catchpole and Slater (2008).
each single bee is born, learns [lernt] to make hives, to produce honey, and
dies, thus it has come to the highest degree of its Bestimmung. But this
is what bees have done from the beginning of the world until even now;
therefore they do not change at all. However, with humans it is completely
different. [Those in] the ancient and first times were further away from their
Bestimmung than the following ones . . . (VA-Pillau 25:839)
However, our earlier point about humanity’s Unbestimmtheit needs to
be factored in here as well. Human culture is normally progressive and
cumulative, but there is no ironclad guarantee of this. For we are free
beings who can and do change our minds. As Kant notes in the Conflict of
the Faculties (1798):
No one can guarantee that now, this very moment, with regard to the
physical Anlage of our species, the epoch of its decline would not be liable
to occur . . . For we are dealing with beings that act freely, to whom, it is
true, what they ought to do may be dictated in advance, but of whom it may
not be predicted what they will do. (SF 7:83, original emphasis)
5. Humans and other animals

Our Keime and Anlagen are natural, physical properties that we have inher-
ited from our biological ancestors. But Kant – unlike Ernst Platner and
other physiological anthropologists of his era – is not interested in psy-
chophysical investigations. In a well-known letter to former student Mar-
cus Herz, written toward the end of 1773, Kant notes that in his own
anthropology he omits entirely the “eternally futile inquiries as to the man-
ner in which bodily organs are connected with thought” (C 10:145; cf.
A 7:119). Physical explanations of psychological phenomena are irrelevant
from the perspective of pragmatic anthropology, for while they may add to
our theoretical knowledge of human beings, they do not contribute to our
practical understanding of human conduct and life: “Everything that bears
no relation to the prudent conduct of human beings, does not belong to
anthropology” (VA-Friedländer 25:472).14
As a result, Kant’s strategy for uncovering human Keime and Anlagen
takes place not at the micro level of physiology (much less neurology) but
rather at the macro level of comparative ethology.15 He compares humans to
14 See also Sturm (2009), esp. 281–303.

15 However, in Pillau, Kant tries out a comparative history strategy: “In order to find the character of
the human species, I will attempt to compare one human age [Menschen-Alter] with the other, and
from this to see, what the Bestimmung of the human being is” (VA-Pillau 25:838). By comparing
different time periods of human existence with one another, one could distinguish constant from
other animals in an attempt to uncover the distinctive features of human
nature. The Mrongovius transcription offers the clearest account of this
strategy. The opening sentence in the “Chapter on the Character of the
Human Species” reads:
One sees what is characteristic of the human species if one places the human
being next to the animal and compares the two. In the system of nature,
the human being belongs to the animal kingdom. However, if I view the
human being as part of the world system [Weltsysthem], he belongs to the
rational beings. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1415; cf. VA-Friedländer 25:675)
In earlier versions of the Lectures on Anthropology, as well as in related
writings on human nature, Kant devotes considerable space to compara-
tive analyses of some of the physical characteristics of humans and other
animals. Was the human being originally destined to walk on two feet or
four? Is he by nature carnivorous or herbivorous? A predator or a peaceful
animal?16 But by the time Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is
published in 1798, he has grown weary of such questions: “the answer to
these questions is of no consequence” (A 7:322).
As noted earlier, the main answer that Kant settles on in the 1798 Anthro-
pology is that the human being, when compared to other “living inhabitants
of the earth [Erdbewohnern],” “is markedly distinguished” by his technical,
pragmatic, and moral Anlagen (A 7:322, original emphasis). But the tech-
nical predisposition itself already signals our inherent rational capacity.
Unlike other terrestrial animals, humans are endowed with the capacity
of reason (see A 7:321) – “reason” not merely in the instrumental sense
of choosing efficient means toward desired ends (Kant acknowledges that
other animals do possess this capacity), but in the stronger substantive
sense of deliberating about ends as well. The human being “is capable of
perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts” (A 7:321).
We have a choice regarding which ends to adopt. And our pragmatic and
moral Anlagen in turn point to further differences between humans and
other animals. We need a much more co-operative external environment,
and immensely more time, in order to realize our potential: “The human
being is determined/destined/called [bestimmt] by his reason to live in a
society with human beings, and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize him-
self, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences” (A 7:324,
merely transitory features of human life. But without the additional evidence of comparative
ethology, one might still not know if one had succeeded in identifying unique properties in the
human animal.
16 See VA-Friedländer 25:675–8; VA-Mrongovius 25:1415–16; Ref 1521, 15:885; cf. RezMoscati 2:423–5.
original emphasis). And this long-term process of enculturating, civiliz-
ing, and moralizing ourselves in turn requires several additional funda-
mental activities that are also missing in other animals. For instance, in
Menschenkunde and elsewhere, Kant announces that “the three means”
to the progress implied by human culture, civilization, and moralization
are public education, public legislation, and religion (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1198).17
But these comparisons between humans and other terrestrial animals do
not tell the whole story about the character of the human species. What
do we make of the human being when viewed as a member of larger world
system of rational beings (see VA-Mrongovius 25:1415)? By the time his last
set of Anthropology Lectures is published in 1798, Kant has managed to tame
his long-standing extraterrestrial enthusiasms. “Experience does not offer
us” any solid evidence regarding the existence of other species of rational
beings elsewhere in the universe, and so, strictly speaking, “the problem
of indicating the character of the human species is absolutely insoluble
[schlecterdings unauflöslich]” (A 7:321; see also VA-Menschenkunde 25:859).
In order to know what is truly unique about our species, we would need
to compare ourselves carefully with another species of rational being. And
while Kant remains “ready to bet everything” (KrV A 825/B 853) he has
in defense of the claim that there is intelligent life on other planets, as an
empirical anthropologist he is forced to work with the available evidence.
6. Struggle versus enjoyment

Kant’s repeated emphases on struggle and work over enjoyment and play
are yet another key feature in his anthropological account of the character
of the human species. Unlike later sociological theorists such as Max Weber
who attribute the developmental success of some groups of humans over
others to external environmental factors (in Weber’s case, the introduction
of the “Protestant ethic” into European life),18 here again Kant offers an
internal biological explanation. In an important Note from his Anthropology
Lectures, he observes that the human being
is not created for the enjoyment of happiness, but rather for the development
of all talents . . . The first question is: what is the Bestimmung of the human
17 Cf. VA-Mrongovius 15:1427; Ref 1524, 15:898.

18 See Weber (1958). In an influential footnote he writes: “Though we cannot discuss the subject here,
many of his [Kant’s] formulations are closely related to ideas of ascetic Protestantism.” Weber (1958),
270n54.
species, enjoyment or culture[?] . . . The human being was not made for
enjoyment [Genießen], but rather for activity . . . Not enjoyment, but rather
development of powers [Kräfteentwickelung] was the end of nature. (Ref
1521, 15:887, 889, 890)
In the published version of the Anthropology, this emphasis on work and
struggle is highlighted in the following passage:
No matter how great his animal tendency may be to give himself over
passively to the impulse of ease and good living, which he calls happiness
[Glückseligkeit], he is still bestimmt to make himself worthy of humanity by
actively struggling with the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity
of his nature. (A 7:325, original emphasis)
Kant’s exclusion of enjoyment and happiness from humanity’s biological
Bestimmung19 has implications far beyond his anthropology. First of all, it
explains in large part his opposition to utilitarianism in ethics. Moral the-
ories that encourage humans to aim directly at happiness are contradicting
nature’s plan for the achievement of our Bestimmung. In his defense of
the need for moral theory in the Groundwork, he notes that “the human
being feels within himself a powerful counterweight to all the commands
of duty,” and that this counterweight is summed up “under the name of
happiness” (G 4:405). Moral theory is needed, at least in part, to protect us
against the seductive call of this counterweight. Despite his effort “to work
out for once a pure moral philosophy, completely cleansed of everything
that . . . belongs to anthropology” (G 4:389), it would appear that Kant’s
anthropological assumptions do influence his ethical theory.
But a second, more disturbing implication concerns Kant’s views regard-
ing nature’s distribution of the drive to work and struggle. He does not
view it as being evenly distributed among all peoples and races. In Pillau,
for instance, he states: “We find people who do not appear to progress
in the perfection of human nature, rather they have come to a standstill,
while others, as in Europe, always progress” (VA-Pillau 25:840). And also
in several Reflexionen on anthropology: “many people do not progress fur-
ther by themselves. Greenlanders. Asians. It must come from Europe” (Ref
1499, 15:781). “We must look for the continual progress of the human race
toward perfection in the Occident and from there the spreading around
the world” (Ref 1501, 15:789).
19 Kant’s doctrine of the highest good plays an important role in his ethical theory, and here it is
defined as “happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality” (KpV 5:110) – viz., a universal
distribution of happiness among all moral agents in proportion to their virtue. But Kant does not
view happiness as part of human beings’ natural teleology.
In recent years several theorists have argued that Kant’s hierarchical
account of peoples and races “disappears in his later published writings”
(Muthu (2003), 183), and that he changes “his earlier views on the status
and characteristics of non-whites” (Kleingeld (2012), 113). But we have seen
that he continues to emphasize the crucial importance of struggle and
delayed gratification even in the 1798 Anthropology, and, as his chapter on
“The Character of the Peoples” in that same work indicates, he continues
to believe that some peoples have the necessary inherent drives to advance
culturally and others do not. Regarding the Spaniard, for instance, Kant
notes that he “remains centuries behind in the sciences” and “is proud of
not having to work” (A 7:316). Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that Kant
changed his mind on this matter.
7. Good out of evil

Another core feature of Kant’s account of the Bestimmung of the human
species is his claim that nature has planted unflattering Keime in us which
will lead to highly beneficial results that we do not actually intend, Keime
that are also the most efficient means toward these unintended ends. In
a manner reminiscent of Adam Smith’s famous account of the “invisible
hand” which leads individuals to promote ends that are not part of their
intention, and indeed to promote them “more effectually” than is otherwise
possible (Smith (1979), 456), Kant argues repeatedly that human progress
depends
not so much on what we do (e.g., on the education we give to the younger
generation) and by what methods we should proceed in order to bring it
about, but instead upon what human nature will do in and with us to force
us onto a track we would not readily take of our own accord. (TP 8:310; cf.
Idea 8:21)
However, in Kant’s case the invisible hand is much bigger. He attributes

to nature’s Keime not just the promotion of the common good through
efficient market mechanisms and self-interested economic behavior, but,
ultimately, world peace itself: “nature guarantees perpetual peace through
the mechanism of human inclinations itself”; “nature itself does it, whether
we will or not” (EF 8:368, 365, original emphasis).
Kant’s most famous articulation of this master trick of nature is his
concept of “unsociable sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit), first presented
in his 1784 essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.
But there are important forerunners of it in several of the Lectures on
Anthropology, and in these earlier discussions Kant puts a decidedly moral
spin on the matter: part of nature’s hidden plan is to bring good out of evil.
For instance, in his discussion of “The Character of Humanity in General”
in Friedländer, he states:
depravity [Bösartigkeit] lies in the nature of all human beings. Since, as it

is, this is a universal arrangement of nature, although it immediately aims
at something evil [etwas böses], it thus must still indirectly have a purpose
[Zweck] . . . Human beings’ desires, jealousy, mistrust, violence, propensity
for enmity against those outside the family: all these attributes have a reason,
and a relation to a purpose. (VA-Friedländer 25:679)
In fact, as Kant notes later, this depravity relates to several beneficial pur-
poses. Nature’s first purpose is the spreading of human beings across the
entire planet. “God wants that human beings should populate the entire
world. All animals have their certain climate, but human beings are to be
found everywhere . . . The best means of promoting this is pugnacity, jeal-
ousy, and disagreement with regard to property” (VA-Friedländer 25:679).
But a civil constitution also develops as an unintended consequence of
human maliciousness: “through what, then, did the most civilized consti-
tution [die civilisirteste Verfaßung] among human beings arise? Through
the depravity of human nature. Hence this is the other great purpose which
arises from it” (VA-Friedländer 25:680). And a civil constitution, he then
adds, “is the source of the development of talents, of the concepts of justice
and all moral perfection” (VA-Friedländer 25:681). So while “the human
being is not good-natured by nature,” “evil [böse] . . . is the source of the
development of good in humanity” (VA-Friedländer 25:682; cf. 691).
In Pillau there is even an entire section entitled “Of the Origin of Good
out of Evil” (VA-Pillau 25:843–45; see also VA-Menschenkunde 25:1199;
Ref 1521, 15:890), which repeats most of the same positive developments
described in Friedländer. And in Mrongovius we find Kant again claiming
that “the inevitable evil [das unvermeidliche Uebel] in the Bestimmung of
the human being is the spur toward the good that the human being has to
perform . . . All of the good pertaining to the Endbestimmung is nevertheless
ultimately produced through this evil [durch dieses Böse]” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1420, 1421; see also A 7:333). In Mrongovius we also encounter several
passages that are close relatives of Kant’s famous notion of unsociable
sociability: the human being “has a propensity toward society due to his
needs, which are far greater for him than for the animals. On the other
hand, the human being also has a propensity toward unsociability” (VA-
Mrongovius 25:1416). “The human being is unsociable,” but “the strong civil
association is further brought about by this unsociability; this produces
more culture and refinement of taste” (VA-Mrongovius 25:1421, 1422; cf.
Idea 8:21).
Like Leibniz’s earlier attempt to justify the existence of an omnipotent,
omnibenevolent, and omniscient God in light of the abundant reality of
evil in the world [theos + dikē = theodicy – see Leibniz (1985)], Kant’s
anthropological effort to show how good ultimately comes out of evil can
be seen as an effort at “an anthropodicy, or a justification of the evils of
human culture in view of the good they secretly serve” (Zöller (2011), 154).
Something good will eventually come out this species, even if we are dealing
with a race of devils rather than angels (cf. EF 8:366), and even if “out of
such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight
can be built” (Idea 8:23).20
8. A perfect civil constitution

However, as noted earlier, the factor that Kant attaches the most importance
to in his anthropological account of the development of the human species
is what he calls a “perfect civil constitution.” For instance, in Mrongovius we
read, “The great masterpiece that nature has striven to bring forth through
the perfect development of the Anlagen is the perfect civil constitution [die
vollkommene bürgerliche Verfaßung] . . . The EndBestimmung of humanity
will be reached if we have a perfect civil constitution” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1425–6, 1429; cf. VA-Menschenkunde 25:1199, VA-Friedländer 25:681).
And earlier, in Pillau: “On what does the attainment of the final Bestimmung
of human nature rest? The universal foundation is the civil constitution”
(VA-Pillau 25:843).
What does Kant mean by a perfect civil constitution? Although he does
not offer many specific details in his anthropological writings, it is clear
that what he is referring to is a set of principles governing a cosmopolitan
society, the main aim of which is to put an end to war. In Mrongovius, for
instance, he describes the perfect civil constitution as one
where the general well-being of the world of humanity is no longer inter-
rupted by wars and various evils [mancherlei Uebel]; where the highest
culture, civilization, and moralization is attained; where a general peace
on earth will reign; and where conflict among princes will be resolved
through judicial pronouncements [Gerichtsaussprüche]. (VA-Mrongovius 25:
1429)
20 See also Louden (2000), 153–7; Louden (2011), 75–8; Rorty and Schmidt (2009).
These judicial pronouncements would clearly have the force of binding
law at the international level. As he notes a few pages earlier in Mrongovius:
states do not make up a universal association [allgemeine Verbindung], for

they do not recognize any laws above their own. War then arises from
this . . . [and] in order to avoid this barbaric state there must be: 1) a rule
of law, 2) a judge who administers justice [der Recht spräche], 3) a power
that holds oversight over these judicial pronouncements. In this way the
Amphictyonic League of the Greeks and the plan of St. Pierre would be
satisfied. (VA-Mrongovius 25:1423; cf. 1426)
Like the ancient Greek city-states, but now on a global scale (a scale
much larger than Saint-Pierre’s proposal for the setting up of a permanent
congress among European states), nations will elect members to a council
whose chief task is the resolution of disagreements among member states.
Once this milestone is reached, Kant notes in Pillau, it will constitute “the
unification of human beings into a whole, which serves for the attainment
of all formation of talents” (VA-Pillau 25:843). And this development will
have to occur at a transnational, worldwide level, for it is only here that
the rights of all members of the human species will be protected. Only at
this level is the perspective of “what is best for the entire world” adopted
(VA-Menschenkunde 25:1202), rather than what is best for a single nation
or group of nations. This “universal cosmopolitan condition,” which “nature
has as its highest aim,” is “the womb in which all of the original Anlagen of
the human species will be developed” (Idea 8:28, original emphasis; cf. 22).
This too is something that we are biologically predisposed to accomplish,
but whether we will ever realize it depends on the choices that we and our
descendants will make.
When we look back on Kant’s pronouncements concerning the destiny
of the human species from our not exactly idyllic present situation, it is
all too easy to shake our heads at yet another Enlightenment dreamer who
was not in touch with reality. But before we settle on this conclusion, it is
important to factor in yet another key component of Kant’s analysis – his
prognosis regarding how long it will take us to reach our Bestimmung.
The Friedländer discussion of the character of humanity closes with a
warning that the universal senate of nations which promises to put an end
to war “is an idea which is possible, but for which thousands of years will
still be required” (VA-Friedländer 25:696). The final page of the Mrongovius
transcript is even more cautious and noncommittal about the means and
time frame required: “that we will one day attain this state can certainly
be hoped for. But what Providence will use as a means thereto remains
inscrutable and completely impossible for us to discover” (VA-Mrongovius
25:1429). And in the published version of his Anthropology Kant is even
more circumspect. Humans
feel bestimmt by nature to [develop] . . . into a cosmopolitan society [cosmopoli-
tanismus] that is continually threatened by disunion but generally progresses
toward a coalition. In itself it is an unattainable [unerreichbare] idea but not
a constitutive principle . . . Rather, it is only a regulative principle: to pursue
this diligently as the Bestimmung of the human race, not without grounded
supposition of a natural tendency toward it. (A 7:331, original emphasis)
In this last passage Kant almost seems to be hedging his bets. On the one
hand, we can see a “natural tendency” in this direction – it too is part of
our biology, for we have inherited a cosmopolitical predisposition from
our ancestors. On the other hand, it is an unattainable idea (cf. MS 6:350)
and (in the language of the first Critique) a merely regulative principle,
not a constitutive one. We are not to ascribe objective reality to this idea;
rather, it is to be used merely as a rule by which to orient our thinking.21
The Anthropology passage is also notable for standing in tension with Kant’s
famous claim in Toward Perpetual Peace that “nature guarantees [garantiert]
perpetual peace through the mechanism of human inclinations itself” (EF
8:368). The guarantee appears to have vanished.22
So I do not think that we can rule out Kant’s pronouncements for being
overly optimistic regarding humanity’s future. He is not naive about the
inherent difficulties of establishing cosmopolitical unity. And his strong
emphasis on the role of biology in human cultural and political develop-
ment also puts him much closer in line with contemporary thinking about
human nature. Unlike many nineteenth- and twentieth-century social the-
orists, Kant does not believe that human beings are born as blank slates
waiting for social engineers to perform wonders on. Indeed, I think the
anthropological Kant would endorse E. O. Wilson’s declaration (issued as
a challenge to traditional humanists and social scientists) that “biology is
the key to human nature, and social scientists cannot afford to ignore its
rapidly tightening principles” (Wilson (1978), 13). But Kant’s biology is, of
course, very different from Wilson’s. Kant rejects Wilson’s contention that
“human behavior can be reduced and determined to . . . [a] considerable
degree by the laws of biology” (Wilson (1978), 13), because he holds that our
21 See KrV A 179/B 221 ff.; A 509/B 537; A 569/ B 597; KU 5:379.
22 Brandt (1999), 505, severely understates matters here when he writes in his Kommentar zu Kants
Anthropologie that “it is difficult to decide whether the . . . guarantee of perpetual peace is still
maintained.”
biology includes open-endedness and free choice. Humans, unlike other
terrestrial animals, have a character that they themselves create. We have a
capacity not just to choose the most efficient means toward desired ends,
but to deliberate about our ends as well – to renounce some ends (even
when they seem “quite irresistible” – see KpV 5:30) in favor of others that
upon reflection seem more reasonable. And our distant ancestors’ related
discovery in themselves of a faculty of choosing for themselves a way of liv-
ing “and not being bound to a single one, as other animals are” (MA 8:112)
marked a crucial turning point in human development. Finally, our ability
to think cosmopolitically, to take into account the interests of all members
of our species, and to plan the requisite legal and political structures for
such a vision, represents a further difference. Other animals cannot think
this far.
We share many core characteristics with other animals, but we also
differ from them in fundamental ways. There are continuities as well as
discontinuities between us and them, and a correct biology will not favor
one to the exclusion of the other. In Kant’s comparative ethology we
find this proper balance, but it is increasingly missing in contemporary
cognition study work which, as one researcher happily notes, “elevates the
animals, but . . . also brings down the humans” (Frans de Waal, as cited in
Borenstein (2012)).
Is there a cosmopolitical predisposition in the human species which will
one day win the upper hand over our more conspicuous and destructive
selfish predispositions? Let us hope so.
cha pter 13
What a young man needs for his venture

into the world: the function and evolution
of the “Characteristics”
John H. Zammito
Green young men – fifteen to twenty years old – at a provincial university on

the easternmost frontiers of German civilization, aiming to take their place
in a dauntingly demanding world: Kant proposed to mold and to equip
them for their venture.1 He had an explicit and fixed sense of what they
needed, and it shaped his pedagogy over almost a half-century of university
instruction. Most particularly, it shaped two innovative courses that became
standbys in his curricular offerings across these many years: the course in
Physical Geography, starting in 1756, and, later, and of central interest here,
the course in Anthropology, starting in 1772. Kant’s pedagogical concern
most directly informed the second part of his course in anthropology – what
he termed “Characteristics.” Indeed, my thesis will be that the invariance
of his pedagogical purpose permitted – if not enforced – a remarkable
stasis in this section of Kant’s work over the course of some thirty years of
delivery, notwithstanding the enormous changes in his critical philosophy
and in the wider discourse in anthropology over the same period.2
Kant was a provincial who insisted on his cosmopolitanism.3 Famously,
he never traveled outside the province of East Prussia, and rarely outside
his birthplace of Königsberg, over his entire life.4 But he insisted that a
1 I use my own translations of Kant’s works throughout this chapter.
2 Odo Marquard made the “turn to the life world” the key to his historical account of the rise
of anthropology, especially in Kant (Marquard (1982)). Andreas Käuser elaborates: “Marquard’s
formulation of an epistemological ‘turn to the life world’, to which anthropology in Kant owed its
development, signifies thus that the object of anthropology in the eighteenth century is the empirical
observation of man” (Käuser (1990), 200). See also Moravia (1980); Fink (1993); Fox (1995); Barkhoff
and Sagarra (1992); Faull (1995); Nowicki (2003); and above all Schings (1994). As Reinhard Brandt
has stressed, Kant’s conception and his delivery of the anthropology course appear to have been
unaffected by the “critical revolution” of the 1780s (Brandt (1991), 89).
3 Kant’s cosmopolitanism has been a very intensely discussed matter, especially of late. See, e.g.,
Kleingeld (2012); Brown (2009). His provincialism is less attended. Travel literature allowed Kant
to project a cosmopolitanism, to imagine safely from his provincial study a tumultuous world of
difference.
4 Tonelli (1975); Gause (1974); Stavenhagen (1949); Kohnen (1994); Ischreyt (1995); Weis (1993).
230
What a young man needs for his venture into the world 231
person living in a trading city like Königsberg, linked so thoroughly to the
wider world, could judge it with discernment.5 Kant was quite proud of
his own attainments in this regard. He was, after all, a saddle-maker’s son,
in all likelihood the first of his entire family to enter university, and he had
become a distinguished Gelehrter: a person of status and significance in his
cultural system.6 He had climbed quite high in his society, at least from
the vantage of his origins, and he saw in his classrooms many other young
men aiming to make that same ascent – sitting, to be sure, among others
whose high birth made the matter of their education rather a question only
of polish and performance (La Vopa (1988)). But all of them, as he saw it,
could benefit from the “worldly wisdom” of one who had been known as
the “gallant Magister,” and who was – by the time the Anthropology courses
began – an Ordinarius, with all the rank, respectability, and (presumably)
insight that entailed (Schöndörffer (1924)).
What exactly is “worldly wisdom”? We should remember that at just this
moment the discipline of philosophy in Germany styled itself Weltweisheit
(Schneiders (1983); Schneiders (1986); Schneiders (1985)). But what exactly
was the “world” in that term, and what the “wisdom”? These were then,
as they are still, polysemous terms. World, especially for the discipline of
philosophy, meant at one and the same time the cosmos (all the way to
the “starry heavens,” to invoke a famous Kantian phrase) and le monde –
high society, as the French language, not at all incidentally, put it. And
wisdom is even more elusively polyvalent. The sophia of the Greek etymo-
logical origins of philosophy was already tainted with a whiff of sophism.
In Kant’s own day, a suspicion of the “wisdom” of religious teachings –
Christian, and a fortiori “Oriental” – would help the discipline of philos-
ophy to assert independence from theology via the autonomy of “reason,”
and to devise a historical construction of its own tradition exclusively from
the Greeks (Bödeker (1990)).7 Along that historical path, practical effi-
cacy and theoretical reason had episodically strained relations – through
such stages as humanism versus scholasticism, l’esprit systematique versus
l’esprit de système, and Popularphilosophie versus Schulphilosophie. Moreover,
5 “A large city such as Königsberg on the river Pregel . . . can well be taken as an appropriate place for
broadening one’s knowledge of human beings as well as of the world, [a place] where true knowledge
can be acquired without even traveling” (A 7:120n).
6 Kant’s sense of his personal social mobility has not been a matter of great concerns to historians of
philosophy since they have been preoccupied, as he would himself have approved, strictly with how
his ideas cohere. But see Hinske (1980); and Lehmann (1969). I have addressed these questions in
Zammito (2002) in more detail than is possible in the scope of this chapter. On Kant’s life, consult
Kuehn (2001); Vorländer (1977); Cassirer (1981); Ritzel (1985); Gulyga (1987). For an overview of
Kant biographies, see George (1987).
7 See Park (2013).
232 John H. Zammito
thoroughly worked-out systems of knowledge, philosophical or other,
offered no particular warrant for social competence. Kant knew a great
number of professors who were socially inept. His scorn for the “pedant”
was omnipresent.8 So how did Kant’s own way of teaching philosophy
answer to this complex need for “worldly wisdom”?
Concretely, what could the classroom provide that could be taken into
the world? That question pertained especially for those who were merely
passing through his philosophy class on their way to the Brodwissenschaften
that would get them their guild cards for future careers. Kant would not
have his green young men for long, and he had to ask himself what he
could give them of practical value. At the same time, there was need not to
overwhelm these youths with too much “world.” Kant’s general pedagogical
view maintained that education should try to avoid burdening students
with ideas that “outstrip their years” and “can only be understood by minds
which are more practiced and experienced” (N 2:305). Kant conceived the
“Characteristics” precisely as a primer, providing the basics necessary to
launch into the complexity of this world: a rough roadmap through the
perils of social convention, not the last word on any of it. “Characteristics”
addressed how to make sense of, and perhaps influence, others.9 To be
sure, his lectures were laced through with admonitions about how these
young men should fashion themselves, but the overt pedagogical goal was
for them to be able to see (and perhaps see through) the self-fashioning
of others. Kant surely hoped that his students’ private interest would
be refined into social responsibility: that “cleverness” (Klugheit) should
mature into “wisdom” (Weisheit) in their dealings with others, and thus
the “general welfare,” not simply their own schemes, would be advanced. If
Kant cared ultimately about their achievement of character in themselves,
the course in anthropology and the “Characteristics” especially had to do
with discernment about the character of others.
1. “Philosophy for the schools” and “philosophy for the world”

The contrast between “philosophy, according to the academic concept,”
and “philosophy, according to the world concept,” developed by Kant
8 See Ritzel (1985), 75, citing from PPH, 27:1:81. Vorländer writes of “numerous expressions in Kant’s
own writings concerning the [lack of] imagination and pedantry of scholars [which] can only be
explained in terms of personal experience” (Vorländer (1977), 85).
9 As Reinhard Brandt observes, “to know whether or not a person has a stable or even moral character
belongs to the sphere of cleverness.” That is, in the first place it serves as a category of assessment of
others for pragmatic purposes (Brandt (1999), 12).
early in his logic lectures and replicated virtually verbatim in the first
Critique, stood at the core of Kant’s sense of his pedagogical mission from
the very beginning of his university teaching career (Log 9:21–4; KrV
A838–9/B866–7). Both in his logic and in his metaphysics courses, he
clearly privileged accessibility for students (N 2:311). Even more concretely,
pedagogical goals serviceable for his students’ subsequent “life of action
and society” constituted the primary agenda of Kant’s physical geography
course. He explained that this course had always been designed to provide
students “adequate knowledge of historical matters which could make good
their lack of experience” (N 2:312, original emphasis). Kant was already
quite clear about Weltkenntnis when he inaugurated the course in 1758.10
He generalized his pedagogical point:
An education is still seriously lacking if it does not teach a person how to
apply his acquired knowledge and bring about a useful employment of these
[acquisitions] in accordance with his understanding and the situation in
which he stands, or [in other words] to make our knowledge practical. And
that is what knowledge of the world is. (VP 9:157–8, original emphasis)
In the Announcement of the Programme of His Lectures for the Winter
Semester 1765–6 Kant suggested that he planned to adjust his physical geog-
raphy course “by condensing that part of the subject which is concerned
with the physical features of the earth, to gain the time necessary . . . to
include the other parts of the subject, which are of even greater gen-
eral utility . . . a physical, moral and political geography” (N 2:312, original
emphasis). This “other part of knowledge of the world” would “consider
man, throughout the world[,] from the point of view of the variety of his
natural properties.” Kant elaborated:
Unless these matters are considered, general judgments about man would
scarcely be possible. The comparison of human beings with each other, and
the comparison of man today with the moral state of man in earlier times,
furnishes us with a comprehensive map of the human species. (N 2:312–13,
original emphasis)
In his 1775 essay “Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen,” Kant
wrote:
the preliminary exercise in the knowledge of the world . . . serves to provide the
pragmatic [dimension] for all the otherwise attained sciences and aptitudes,
10 See the essay “Entwurf und Ankündigung eines Collegii der physischen Geographie nebst dem
Anhange einer kurzen Betrachtung über die Frage: Ob die Westwinde in unsern Gegenden darum
feucht seien, weil sie über ein großes Meer streichen” (1757), 2:1–12.
234 John H. Zammito
so that they are usable not merely in the schools but in life. Thereby the
prepared student may be introduced to the stage where he will practice his
vocation, namely the world. (VvRM 2:443, original emphasis)
By the time he wrote this, Kant had supplemented his physical geography
course with a new one devoted entirely to anthropology. In his letter to
Marcus Herz, in the winter of 1773–4, Kant asserted his own concept
of an empirical science of anthropology as against Ernst Platner’s widely
celebrated Anthropologie für Ärzte und Weltweise (1772):
my plan is entirely different [from Platner’s]. The intention I have is to
present . . . the sources from all the sciences which [bear on] mores [Sit-
ten], efficacy [Geschicklichkeit], socializing [Umgang], the method of cul-
tivating and governing men, and in the process to open up everything
practical . . . I endeavor . . . to develop . . . a preliminary exercise in expertise
[Geschicklichkeit], in cleverness [Klugheit], and even in wisdom [Weisheit] for
the academic youth . . . to be distinguished from all other academic instruc-
tion, which can be called knowledge of the world [Kentnis der Welt]. (C
10:145–146)
In the earliest surviving version of the Anthropology Lectures presented
explicitly under the “pragmatic” rubric, the Friedländer Lectures of 1775–6,
Kant’s introduction to the course was all about Weltkenntnis, about the
proper use of knowledge, which, he pointedly observed, separated theory
from pedantry (VA-Friedländer 25:469). The academic needed to become
a “man of the world” – the opposite of a pedant – by learning how to make
his knowledge applicable in a popular context, so that the unschooled
could appreciate and understand what he had to offer.11
Yet Kant remained adamant that there was need for systematic study. He
saw himself involved in an emerging theoretical branch of knowledge, and
he claimed that this new empirical science could never mature if it were
not organized and formulated as an academic discipline (VA-Friedländer
25:469). This was what he deemed lacking in all anthropology hitherto:
“But why has no coherent science of man been constructed from the
great treasure of observations of the English authors?” (VA-Collins 25:7).
If anthropology had pragmatic payoffs, the task was first to learn the
field. Kant posed as its criterial standards clearly academic notions of rigor
(Gründlichkeit) and system. It should begin with the universal: “General
11 Only when the philosopher brought all his science to the service of the vocation of man could he
be a teacher of wisdom. Socrates, Kant pointed out, was often acclaimed as the one who brought
philosophy down from heaven to earth by distinguishing between speculation and wisdom (PhilEnz
29:1, 9).
knowledge always precedes local knowledge if the latter is to be ordered
and directed through philosophy: in the absence of which all acquired
knowledge can yield nothing more than fragmentary groping around and
no science” (A 7:121). It remains unclear, however, what sense of “science”
Kant proposed for this new project. It certainly cannot be reconciled with
his strict transcendental sense of science as expounded in his Metaphysi-
cal Foundations of Natural Science, but what sense could it have (MAN
4:467–72)? Kant seems to have put stress upon two features: first, system-
aticity, i.e. organization according to principles; and, second, empiricism,
i.e. grounding in observational data. But the fact is that neither of these
warrants seems compelling. Reinhard Brandt has made the most persua-
sive assessment here, in my view. Not only could anthropology not be a
mathematical or even an experimental science; it could not be nomothetic
either. Instead, it was a collection of observations, which Kant proposed
somehow to systematize. Kant certainly provided many rubrics to cre-
ate the impression of systematicity, but Brandt properly observes that “it
is one of the peculiarities of the Kantian anthropology that the assert-
edly complete rubrics are neither derived nor explained as such, nor are
they available from the wider anthropological scholarship.” Kant’s schemes
were grounded neither in his systematic philosophy nor in state-of-the-art
research in the empirical field, though the tacit appeal was to this latter
consensus. Brandt concludes: “The lack of empiricism in an empirical field
gets compensated by a sort of linguistic politics [eine bestimmte Sprach-
politik] . . . From the ‘I call [it]’ arises an ‘it is called’; ‘[this] means’, and
then, in the end, ‘[this] is.’ The pretended consensus replaces recourse
to facts.” Bluntly, “The Kantian linguistic politics hides the absence of
data from experience” (Brandt (1999), 39–42). Still, one might hold out
that what Kant offered, perhaps misleadingly, as a science, was a practical
guide based on whatever “experience” he had managed to pull together and
organize for articulation.
What was this “world” that Kant’s students would enter upon? Perhaps
the most pervasive feature of the middle of the eighteenth century in Ger-
many was the rise of a “public sphere” and the gebildeten Stände (see Melton
(2001)). Frank Kopitzsch notes that while “academic schools and univer-
sities were of substantial importance for the propagation of enlighten-
ment ideas,” over the course of the eighteenth century “the enlightenment
expanded in all ways – in thematic terms as well as in recruitment – turn-
ing from a matter of ‘scholars’ [Gelehrten] to a concern of the ‘educated’
[Gebildeten]”(Kopitzsch (1983), 3–4). For a social group which defined
itself and its progressive aspirations around education, the university and
236 John H. Zammito
its creation and propagation of “human capital” could not be a matter of
indifference. Their struggle for self-definition and eventual public recog-
nition found expression in a sharply negative attitude toward the model of
enculturation that university scholarship offered. According to Hans Erich
Bödeker, the new gebildeten Stände challenged the authority and the world-
view of the established Gelehrtenstand (Bödeker (1992)). R. Steven Turner
elaborates: “In the name of Aufklärung critics denounced the universities
for their outmoded, medieval constitutions and their pedantic curriculum
still mired in Wolffian philosophy, theological dogmatism, and the Latin
imitatis” (Turner (1974), 501). In the words of Werner Schneiders, “school
philosophy became conscious of its open flank to the world” (Schneiders
(1983), 13). It needed to transform itself into the vanguard articulation of a
new public’s aspirations to practical success and happiness in the world.12
The ideal of sociability (Umgang; Geselligkeit) was of immeasurable
importance for the emergent gebildeten Stände (Mauser (1989)). Character
formation (Bildung), in that distinctively pragmatic–moral sense central to
the pedagogical undertakings of Kant, involved the effectiveness (Geschick-
lichkeit) and the cleverness (Klugheit) to cope and indeed prosper in this
world, but also the (moral) wisdom (Weisheit) to do so with integrity.
The cultivation of these capabilities stressed observation (Beobachtung),
keen notation of particular instances, hence a process of learning that
built upon empirical and historical accrual (Moravia (1973)). The cardinal
value of Selbstdenken was a matter of the cultivation of individual judg-
ment (Urteilskraft), personal knowledge, drawing upon all of one’s own life
experience.
To be an educated, upwardly mobile young German in the second half
of the eighteenth century was to struggle to situate oneself both in the
territorial state of one’s locality and in the wider framework of a European
culture. The challenge of achieving citizenship (Bürgertum) together with
humanity (Menschheit) constituted the core of “enlightenment,” as Moses
Mendelssohn famously articulated its meaning (Mendelssohn (1784)). A
significant conflict over the purposes of higher education arose between
individual self-fashioning (Bildung) and professional training (Brodwis-
senschaft). This had its concomitant in the “conflict of the faculties” within
12 This gave sharpness to the challenge of Popularphilosophie to Schulphilosophie at the middle of the
eighteenth century. See Holzhey (1977); Zimmerli (1978); Zimmerli (1981). The tension can be traced
back to a controversy at the University of Halle between the Klugheitslehre of Christian Thomasius
and the Gründlichkeit propounded by Christian Wolff. See Schneiders (1989); Lieberwirth (1994);
Ciafardone (1982); Ciafardone (1983); Weber (1999); Hinske (1983); Grimm (1987); Herrmann
(1984).
the German universities, on which Kant proved a discerning commentator
(SF 7:1–116). In 1778 the Prussian minister of culture, von Zedlitz, sent
Kant a semiofficial request to use his influence
to hold back students at the university from the bread courses [Brodt-
Collegiis] and to help them understand that the little bit of legal – indeed
even theological and medical – learning [they pursued] would be vastly
easier and more certain in application if the student had more philosophical
knowledge. (C 10:236)
Kant’s whole argument for the pre-eminence of the philosophy faculty in
the university had this pragmatic backdrop.
2. The shape of the “Characteristics” over time

Throughout the decades of his course, the crucial source of material (and
structure) for the “Characteristics” remained Kant’s own Observations on the
Feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime of 1764 (Beo 2:205–56). In that work
and in his subsequent anthropology, he explicitly invoked “observation
and experience” (Beobachtung und Erfahrung) – that constantly conjoined
terminology for the “new” method in the “science of man” (VA-Collins
25:7). The observations and experiences Kant offered were largely his own –
formative of his own character by 1764.13
The order and length of the topics in “Characteristics” shifted across
the years. In the published version of the Anthropology, Kant specified his
organization in four “divisions”: “(1) the character of the person, (2) the
character of the sexes, (3) the character of the peoples, (4) the character
of the species” (A 7:285). This neat organization, advancing systemati-
cally from individual to species, was not the way the actual presentation
of the Lectures evolved across time. The first version of his course, from
1772 to 1773, had a fourfold schema of presentation of a totally different
form: (1) the bodily, (2) temperaments as link between body and soul, (3)
mental capabilities (Gemüthkräfte), and finally (4) character as the discre-
tionary application of these others (VA-Collins 25:218). The topics treated
proceeded through temperaments, natural endowments (Naturell) – i.e.
the Gemüthskräfte, (personal) character, physiognomy, national character,
13 When does one establish character? “Around forty is when character first really establishes itself”
(Ref 1497, 15:769). Understanding in the sense of judgment is only achieved at forty (Ref 404,
15:163). And see Ref 1496, 414 (15:712, 167), where Kant speaks of judgment coming “not until after
some years.” “After one’s fortieth year one learns nothing new” (Ref 373, 15:148). Kant turned forty
in 1764.
238 John H. Zammito
and finally the sexes. In Friedländer, from 1775 to 1776, no clear organi-
zational scheme was offered at the outset; instead, a discursive treatment
of notions from the 1772–3 version distinguished from the merely “phys-
iological” the new “pragmatic” perspective that Kant claimed to be the
authentic approach. The actual sequence of topics discussed ran parallel to
the earlier version: first temperaments, then (personal) character, national
character, physiognomy, a new section on species character, followed by a
discussion of sex difference and a brief (never to be repeated) treatment
of (child-rearing and) education (VA-Friedländer 25:624 ff.). According to
the terse Pillau notes of 1777–8, Kant began with temperament, then went
on to character, physiognomy, national character, sexual difference, and
finally the character of the species, including a (dismaying) discussion of
“races” (VA-Pillau 25:814 ff.). The Menschenkunde text, estimated to date
from 1781–2, proceeded from temperament to character, then physiog-
nomy, national character, races, sexual difference, and finally the character
of the species (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1156 ff.). Finally, in the Mrongovius
notes from 1784–5, the “Characteristics” were organized in two sections:
natural endowments and actual character. Under the first, Kant discussed
temperament, physiognomy, and (personal) character; under the second,
he discussed sexual difference, national character, and the character of the
species (VA-Mrongovius 25:1368 ff.). One marvels that sexual difference
should fall under actual character, since women in Kant’s view could not
have any, and that national character should fall under the same organiza-
tional rubric, since he construed it as not primarily artificial but natural.
In short, the organization of Kant’s “Characteristics” in the lectures was
hodgepodge. It remains to be seen whether the argument, notwithstanding
the architectonic, proves more coherent.
3. Knowing the “inside” from the “outside”

Kant described the entire second part of his Anthropology Lectures in terms
of “cognizing the interior of the human being from the exterior” (A 7:283).
This was the essence of the applicability of his insights for his young
students as they ventured forth into the world. Thomas Sturm formulates
this as the explicitly pragmatic, as opposed to theoretical, thrust of the
“Characteristics” – “the practice of judgment of other persons and their
ways of acting and reasons for acting . . . for empirical purposes” (Sturm
(2009), 410).
In several of the student lecture notes, a section on “physiognomy”
came specifically to be identified with this project of reading from outward
appearance the interior character of others, and Kant carried this forward
into the published version: “Physiognomy is the art of judging a human
being’s way of sensing [Sinnesart – better, perhaps: sort of sensibility] or
way of thinking [Denkungsart] according to his visible form; it judges the
interior by the exterior” (A 7:295). Kant was clear that humans did in fact
try to judge by the demeanor of others, especially the expression in their
eyes: “it is a natural impulse to first look [another] in the face, particularly
in the eyes, in order to find out what we can expect” (A 7:296). But he
maintained that this could never be made into a science and, at times, he
doubted whether it could even be an art; it was at best a knack that some –
perhaps “geniuses” – might be good at (VA-Friedländer 25:666). Over the
course of the Lectures, the treatment of physiognomy grew increasingly
critical, and by the published version Kant had turned largely dismissive of
Lavater, whose views, he wrote, had been “completely abandoned . . . There
is no longer any demand for physiognomy” (A 7:297).
Did Kant’s characterization of temperaments fare better? Were they any
more promising pragmatically for his students’ Weltkenntnis? Tempera-
ments had long served as a medical standby and a cultural convention by
Kant’s time, and he added little, apart from his architectonic scheme differ-
entiating the sanguine and melancholic as temperaments of “feeling” from
the choleric and phlegmatic as temperaments of “activity” (VA-Friedländer
25:637). The most noteworthy development across the Lectures was the
increasing emphasis on the strengths of the phlegmatic temperament, as
against the starkly disparaging formulations of his Observations.14 By the
later Lectures and the published version, Kant had come to esteem the
strengths of the phlegmatic temperament rather highly, considering them a
psychological analogue of truly philosophical wisdom (VA-Menschenkunde
25:1166–7). It is noteworthy, as well, that Kant found more and more of
this strong phlegmatic temperament in his own Germanic people.15 Given,
however, that he insisted that these temperaments were ideal types and
that actual personalities displayed a spectrum of traits, it was not clear how
much value in the world these typologies might have had for his students.
They seemed rather a vehicle for Kant to exercise his categorizing propen-
sity: a feature, we might note, that Kant also characterized as distinctly
Germanic.16 When we ask, then, how much help Kant’s entire discussion
14 Beo 2:224; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1166; VA-Mrongovius 25:1374–5. See Brandt (1999), 286, 290–1.
15 VA-Friedländer 25:647; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1185. See Brandt (1999), 318, citing the unpublished
Physische Geographie Hesse.
16 “The Germans are methodical, regular, orderly and precise . . . they observe order and rule, which has
now risen to great heights . . . Their books contain much order and [many] parts” (VA-Friedländer
25:658).
240 John H. Zammito
of the outward mien of persons might actually have provided, I think the
answer would appear to be quite modest.
4. Personal character
How Kant’s conception of establishing character developed across the Lec-
tures to the published version has been the focus of the most intense
interpretative work in recent years, from the introduction to the critical
edition by Reinhard Brandt and Werner Stark through the works of Felic-
itas Munzel and Thomas Sturm. All of them concentrate on the Kantian
terminological discrimination of “way of thinking” (Denkungsart) from
“sort of sensibility” (Sinnesart) as crucial to his conception of “character”
in the anthropology.17 This innovation appeared in the 1775–6 lectures and
became more established and prominent as the lecture courses continued
across the 1780s and 1790s, marking, in Sturm’s view, the most salient
change in the course over time (Sturm (2009), 411). But there are striking
limitations to the pragmatic role of Denkungsart in the “Characteristics.”
As even Sturm notes, it cannot be used to categorize sexes, nations, or
races (Sturm (2009), 420). Thus Sturm is reduced to suggesting that Kant
proposed using Sinnesart to assess others and Denkungsart primarily for
oneself (Sturm (2009), 419). That isn’t quite right either, since Kant did
suggest that we seek to discern character in others in our pragmatic dealings
with them (Brandt (1999), 12). But it demonstrates that Kant’s project in
his “pragmatic” anthropology became ambiguous between the problem of
negotiating one’s relation with others – the domain of Klugheit and the
“pragmatic” par excellence – and the problem of developing a good char-
acter in oneself – Denkungsart as Weisheit. Moreover, there remains a gap
of some significance between the “wisdom” articulated in the Anthropol-
ogy course, albeit a social and political responsibility for the “betterment
of the world,” and the properly “moral” domain that Kant articulated
in his ethical philosophy as such.18 There is, as Brandt and others have
noted, not a mention of the “categorical imperative” or any of the rest
of Kant’s technical moral apparatus anywhere in the lectures or the pub-
lished version of the anthropology (Brandt (1999), 14–16; see also Brandt
(2003)).
17 Brandt and Stark (1997); Munzel (1999); Sturm (2009).
18 The connection of Kant’s anthropology to his moral philosophy is the most controversial question
in current Kant scholarship on these matters. See, e.g., Wood (1991); Louden (2000); Jacobs and
Kain (2003a).
What is clear is that Kant, in the Anthropology Lectures, was interested
in human beings as agents, in discretionary judgment and self-fashioning,
and concomitantly in accountability to the judgments of others. “Here it
does not depend on what nature makes of the human being, but of what
the human being makes of himself ” (A 7:292, original emphasis). There
was, to be sure, something reliable (predictable) in any form of character,
and a fortiori of a good one, but since most of the human race was not
to be credited even with the capacity for character formation, and since,
moreover, it was extremely hard to read – whether in self or in others – it
proves to offer little in the way of strictly “pragmatic” guidance.19
5. Sexual difference
Over thirty years Kant never failed to offer counsel to his young men
regarding their engagement with the “fair sex,” both in good society and
especially in marriage.20 Over these years, Kant gave literally the same
counsel. Since he had never actually negotiated a domestic relationship,
he drew heavily upon David Hume and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau
for his assessment. Notwithstanding, Kant was quite sure of himself as
regards women and their nature. He commented that women could only
be understood in their own right in advanced and civilized societies, since
in more primitive ones they were no more than a sort of domesticated
animal (VA-Friedländer 25:700). In civilized societies, paramountly the
French, women could be seen as setting the tone of sociability. He bluntly
denied that women could ever attain to true character, insisting that a
Denkungsart of their own was entirely beyond them (Brandt (1999), 291,
295). Yet he did discern in them a strong sense for “honor,” molded, to be
sure, strictly by the conventions of their culture and estate, together with
a strong need to captivate male attention and, ultimately, marital devotion
(VA-Friedländer 25:632). Within marriage, Kant observed invariably and
in the same wording, women sought to dominate [herrschen], while men
had to administer [regieren] the household (VA-Friedländer 25:717; VA-
Menschenkunde 25:1193). Inclination [Neigung] commanded, he observed,
but the husband’s sober management sought to reconcile the caprice of
19 But for the best effort to make this work, see Munzel (1999). See also Stark (2003).
20 Kant’s conception of women never varied far from what he wrote originally in Beo and in the Bem
that he appended to that text. For a more extended discussion of Kant and women, see Zammito
(2002), 120–31. See also Jauch (1988); Hull (1996); Schröder (1999).
242 John H. Zammito
the lady with the resources of the household (VA-Friedländer 25:717; see
Brandt (1999), 440–1).
6. National character
Kant was at the cutting edge of his culture’s concern with the ideals
of Bürgertum and Weltbürgertum. What distinguished his view was his
decided emphasis on the superiority of cosmopolitanism as a frame of
reference and a goal of personal, social, and moral orientation (Kleingeld
(2012)). Germans of his day were striving for a sense of cultural nation-
hood; that would be the great ambition of Herder and his generation. Kant
found it appealing that Germans appeared less concerned with nationhood
than with cosmopolitanism, or, in another phrasing, had as their distinc-
tive national character an orientation to learning from other cultures and
drawing the best from them (VA-Mrongovius 25:1409). Germans of this
era, especially in a context dominated by King Frederick ii, wrestled with
the overweening authority of French culture.21 To establish how to relate to
this French standard of taste was a constant question from royal courts to
urban society. German theater and literature, no less than German fashion
and conduct, struggled to find some indigenous basis from which to cope
with the French. One of the striking resources the Germans discovered in
this quandary was the British alternative to French culture (Maurer (1987)).
Kant was, in his early years, very taken with that Anglophilia.22 Other key
figures of the German Enlightenment would carry it forward across their
entire careers.23 Thus a discriminating sense of French and British culture
constituted a crucial desideratum for young men in the world of the late
eighteenth century in Germany. But East Prussia was peculiarly attuned
to the impinging mystery of the Slavic powers, especially Russia, which
occupied the whole province during the Seven Years War, and which con-
tinued to fascinate Germans, and to recruit them for intellectual purposes,
across Kant’s lifetime. Beyond this, there was enormous fascination with
a far wider world fostered by a burgeoning travel literature. Europeans of
all nations, and Germans among them, could not get enough informa-
tion about these exotic settings, whether civilized, like China and Japan, or
21 This obsession with French culture as a standard can be traced back at least to Thomasius (1687).
22 “Particularly important [in connection with Königsberg] is the close connection with England and
the reception of the modern ideas of English philosophy (empiricism, sensualism, skepticism) as
well as literature which it mediated, not to be forgotten the more liberal civic and economic ideas”
(Westlinning (1995), 73).
23 Maurer (1987); Kuehn (1987); Brandt (1992).
primitive, as in the New World, Africa, or the Pacific.24 How to make sense
of these newly discovered peoples figured directly in how to make sense of
themselves as Europeans.25 Kant was attuned to such considerations both
in his readings and in his teachings.
Kant’s treatment of national character showed only small changes over
the course of his Lectures. The most notable feature was a dramatic cool-
ing of his estimation of the English (Brandt (1999), 314). By contrast,
his treatment of the French changed little, even in the context of the great
French Revolution. One certainly finds little beyond commonplaces in any
of this, and it seems clear that Kant leaned heavily on his sources, above
all Hume on “National Characters.” He used, with some sharply critical
reservations, Montesquieu on historical sociology as well (VA-Mrongovius
25:1407). From his Observations of 1764 through the published Anthropol-
ogy of 1798, these remarks offered little that one would not have found
in the popular press. We might make one exception concerning Kant’s
starkly negative characterization of the peoples of the eastern frontier of
Europe (Brandt (1999), 312–19). He disparaged the Poles as incapable of
self-government, while he consigned the Turks and the Russians irrecov-
erably to the Orient and its penchant for despotism (Ref 1367 15:595).
At times Kant would qualify his judgment of the Russians with the proviso
that they had arrived so newly on the scene of nationhood that it might be
too early to discern their character.26 He was equally happy, though, with
the view that they had come too late to ever attain one.
7. Races
The treatment of “races” in the Anthropology Lectures varied, and tended,
on the whole, to diminish, since he was inclined to reserve his discussion
of “race” to his course in Physical Geography (VA-Menschenkunde 25:1195).
Kant used “race” to characterize the geographical distribution of human
populations, and he took the features of “race” to be primarily physiological,
with cultural concomitants; hence it was a question primarily of “natural
history,” not appropriate to his new “pragmatic” treatment of anthropology.
Accordingly, some of the Anthropology Lecture notes had discussions of
24 The eighteenth century proved a key moment in Europe’s recognition of a wider world of mankind.
See Marshall (1982). Kant was particularly concerned with this matter, and amassed a considerable
library of travelogues and histories of exotic peoples.
25 For a new consideration of these issues with reference to France, see Harley (2012).
26 See VA-Friedländer 25:661; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1185–6; Ref 1345 15:588; as well as Brandt (1999),
310–20, citing the unpublished Physische Geographie Hesse.
244 John H. Zammito
“race” but many did not.27 In the ultimate, published form, Kant in fact
referred his readers to the work of one of his commentators, Christoph
Girtanner, for a fuller discussion of human “races.”28 On the whole, “race”
seemed a way to rank non-European peoples relative to the Europeans
themselves, particularly in terms of the capacity for rational self-fashioning.
Kant affirmed that only the European “race” was fully capable of this,
finding various degrees of fault with all the others, most starkly with the
New World peoples, then the Africans, but also with the peoples of Asia
and the Pacific.29 The future of the human race, he clearly believed, lay
entirely in the hands of the “white” European peoples. Others would either
“die off” or come under European dominion.30 What Kant provided his
young men, then, were widely circulating ethnocentric and imperialist
stereotypes of non-European peoples, pronounced from the authority of
his lectern.31 How “cosmopolitan” this will all have been, the reader can
judge.
8. The species as a whole

Treatment of the character of the human species as a whole started in the
1775–6 lectures. The instigation was Rousseau and the wider discourse in
the natural history of the human as a species of animal (VA-Friedländer
25:675).32 Kant wished to supplement such physical anthropology with the
decisive discrimination, widely shared in his time, that man belonged as
well to a different order, that of rational beings.33 Kant had long been fond
of Moscati’s claim that while by physiology man was designed to walk on
all fours, reason impelled him to walk upright (VA-Friedländer 25:676; see
27 There is no treatment of race in VA-Friedländer or in VA-Mrongovius. There is such treatment in
VA-Pillau 25:816 ff.; and VA-Menschenkunde 25:1186–7.
28 For the reference to Girtanner, see A 7:320. See Girtanner (1796). On this whole issue see Eigen
and Larrimore (2006).
29 VA-Friedländer 25:655; VA-Menschenkunde 25:1181, 1187; Brandt (1999), 313.
30 VA-Pillau 25:816, 833, 840. See Brandt (1999), 290; and especially Larrimore (1999).
31 There is a question whether Kant derived these stereotypes from a specific source or from the general
cultural environment of his age. See Eze (1995); Eze (1997); Bernasconi (2001); and Louden (2000,
93–106). Much can be correlated with David Hume, but an even closer prospect has emerged in the
scholarship concerning the role of Christoph Meiners. What is clear is that Kant did not learn any
of this from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. If anything, the influence in this vein went the other
way. And Blumenbach was far more careful about drawing cultural and psychological features from
physical ones than Kant appears to have been. See Dougherty (1990).
32 Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and behind it Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, served as
the decisive texts inaugurating this concern with natural history for Kant. In the background, too,
was Linnaeus, with his classification of the human species among the primates.
33 On the relation of Kant’s physical anthropology to his “philosophical” anthropology, see esp. Cohen
(2009a).
RezMoscati 2:421–6). Natural historians found these arguments less than
compelling, but that did not stop Kant.34 Similarly, Kant took as a key
distinction between humans and animals that humans had spread across
the entire planet, while animals were confined to specific geographical
niches. He explained this trait as a providential consequence of human
belligerence, driving the less powerful peoples to the far peripheries (VA-
Friedländer 25:679). This was but one aspect of his crucial anthropological
category of “unsocial sociability” which would find prominence in his Idea
for a Universal History and elsewhere (VA-Mrongovius 25:1421 ff., Idea 8:15–
32). Indeed, we find in Kant’s Anthropology Lectures the first formulations
of many of his characteristic views in philosophy of history and political
philosophy, especially this idea of “unsocial sociability” as the cunning of
nature in evoking and disciplining human capabilities, ultimately enabling
the teleological prospect of republican world government.
The main thrust of his argument was that the drive to humanity entailed
the suppression of animality, that the animal rationabile needed to become
the animal rationale (A 7:321 ff.). He accounted for this developmental pro-
cess both at the level of the individual, contrasting the natural age of sexual
maturity with the socially accepted age for its actualization, and at the level
of societies, discussing Rousseau’s famous question whether man was not
happier in the state of nature than in that of civilization. Kant contended,
in line with Rousseau himself, that what humans had in the conjectural
state of nature was an absence of good and evil, an inhuman, animal “inno-
cence” which nature itself demanded be displaced by self-determination
(VA-Friedländer 25:684–5, 689, VA-Mrongovius 25:1417–18). While instinct
governed animal behavior, humans were thrust by nature upon their own,
rational devices (VA-Friedländer 25:682 ff., VA-Menschenkunde 25:1199).35
But with rational maxims came imaginative elaborations, and desires out-
paced achievements. “In the natural state, the incentives for vices are not
roused; these are first roused in the civil state by the increase in needs
and desires which arise from it” (VA-Friedländer 25:687). The result was,
to be sure, a miserable civilization, but one in which human capabilities
were compelled to develop and human reason took charge of behavior,
even if with little moral improvement. Thus, Kant wrote, “Now . . . the
human being is not yet in the perfection of the civil state . . . When, how-
ever, will such perfection be attained?” (VA-Friedländer 25:690). It could
never be achieved at the level of the individual human, in contrast with
34 Blumenbach made a thorough criticism of Moscati in his inaugural dissertation of 1775. See
Blumenbach (1865).
35 The decisive discussion of these issues for the German Enlightenment was Reimarus (1760).
246 John H. Zammito
animals, each of which routinely fulfilled its species potential; in man this
could only be a species achievement (VA-Pillau 25:839). Nonetheless, Kant
was confident of this human destination (Bestimmung). “The human race
must . . . actually attain this degree of perfection, which is the purpose
of its vocation, and even if it takes centuries” (VA-Friedländer 25:693–4).
This species achievement would be contingent upon political progress, the
rise of republican governments, and international accords. Kant believed,
as well, that religion would play a crucial role, as humans pursued their
vocation trusting in providential assistance (VA-Friedländer 25:695 ff.).
Brandt suggests that the treatment of the character of the species as a whole
brought a new dimension into the Lectures, the domain of the “ought”
over against that of the “is” (Brandt (1999), 9). Perhaps, he elaborates, the
darkness of the empirical account of human interactions that Kant had
developed in the empirical psychology and the discussion of human char-
acter needed the redemption of a providential purpose for the species as a
whole (Brandt (1999), 12–13). Nevertheless, as Brandt recognizes, the tele-
ological destination (Bestimmung) of the human species was not exactly a
matter of “pragmatic” observation. It was, rather, something more precisely
“practical,” i.e. a hope that enabled moral steadfastness (Brandt (1999), 10).
In sum, Kant shifted in his “Characteristics” between predictability,
as a measure enabling effective negotiation with others in society, and
accountability, a measure of approval or disapproval of others in these
same negotiations. At the same time, flux between natural endowment
(Sinnesart) and discretionary behavior (Denkungsart) made the “pragmatic
point of view” at best approximate. Finally, the question whether the
“Characteristics” aimed primarily at discerning the character of others or
at shaping one’s own remains vexed, as the recent critical literature makes
amply clear. Sturm resorts to the view that Kant’s work was really not
intended as a guide for private advancement based on empirical rules,
since it recognized too much uncertainty (Sturm (2009), 461). Instead, it
was a perspective on the complexity that pervaded human practices and their
interpretation. Sturm’s view leads one to consider it almost a contemplative
(academic?) wisdom, not a guide for action (in the world). Or, at best,
it bespoke the consoling hope for a benign species future to hold against
the chilling factuality of human follies, drawing on the few features that
seemed to betoken the legitimacy of such hope.36
36 If, as Brandt (1999, 16) has argued effectively, and Sturm (2009, 407) has echoed, Kant does not
address explicitly his famous “fourth” question – “what is man?” – in the anthropology materials,
he certainly comes to give increasing scope to reflections in light of his “third” question, “what can
man hope?”
9. Conclusion
Steven Lestition has argued that there were virtually no discernible changes
in the course after about 1779 (Lestition (1985)). That it had not changed
significantly in content over thirty years – three decades that saw enormous
growth in cultural anthropology across the European and specifically the
German intellectual landscape – may help explain why the book version of
his famous lectures proved a distinct disappointment when it appeared in
1798.37 A lot of the energy and liveliness which had characterized the course
in its early years seems to have been wrung out of the published version.
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s harsh review of the work, faulting it for failing
to offer more than tired clichés, found no one willing to rise to its defense.38
Indeed, “Characteristics” correlated most closely with investigations in the
“science of man” across the European Enlightenment, but Kant seems to
have taken little account of the work that paralleled his own over these
decades. When we compare the richness of comparative cultural history
and ethnography offered by Kant’s peers – in Germany and beyond –
it appears that there was not very much in Kant’s “Characteristics” that
seemed cutting-edge or path-setting.39 Helmut Pfotenauer suggests that
Kant suppressed rather than articulated the anthropological contingencies
that were at the heart of the eighteenth-century science of man: “Those irri-
tating experiences of the complex and often obscure, alienating properties
of individuality which interested the psychologists and which approached
articulation in the attempts of self-reflexive anthropology, came [by Kant’s
measures] to be tabooed” (Pfotenauer (1987), 10).
We may be able to make sense of this best if we understand the course
very concretely in terms of his pedagogical project. We should ask whether,
from Kant’s perspective, the life-situation and problems of his students
changed significantly over the later eighteenth century. Since in his view
they did not, Kant saw no reason to change his guiding idea for the course.
Moreover, the course was unquestionably popular, not only in Königsberg
but by reputation and by the distribution of student notes throughout
Germany.40 Dare we suspect that the success or popularity of his course
made Kant somewhat complacent? More importantly, two crucial theoret-
ical considerations pervade current commentary. First, should Kant have
37 On the immediate reception in 1798, see Brandt (1999), 7. Goethe, to take one key figure, found
the work less than prepossessing.
38 Schleiermacher (1799). On the absence of rebuttal to Schleiermacher’s critique, see Brandt (1999),
7. On the reception, see also Wellman (2010).
39 See Carhart (2007); and Wellman (2010).
40 See the introduction to the translation of Kant’s Anthropology (Louden (2007a), 228).
248 John H. Zammito
essayed more systematically to integrate his critical philosophy with his
anthropology? Kant scholars have been preoccupied with this first issue,
and the tantalizing proposal that his famous “fourth question” – what is
man? – might well encompass the entire philosophical project. But Kant
never wrought a finished philosophical anthropology, and it is not clear
that this field derives primarily from his vision.41 Second, why did he not
incorporate the empirical richness available in the new cultural anthro-
pology of his contemporaries? Historians of disciplinary anthropology, I
believe, must focus on this second question. There is reason to question
whether Kant’s vision of what anthropology as a discipline should become
had any sustained impact on the subsequent development of that field. I
have taken the view that it was far less influential than rival versions – both
at home and abroad.42 His version of empirical anthropology, to be blunt,
led nowhere.43 Kant’s true importance lay in other areas.
It is Kant as technical philosopher, not Kant as pedagogue or anthropol-
ogist, who has preoccupied the attention of the Western mind. If “Charac-
teristics” was Kant’s representative work, how important would he appear
to us historically? One might have recourse to a crucial observation by
Lewis Beck: Kant would appear one of many “writers” of his time and no
more historically significant to us than they have become (Beck (1969),
426). Even taking to heart what Kant professed explicitly as the goal of
his work, that it serve as a propaedeutic to discerning social judgment in
his young students, we might (perhaps cruelly) conduct a little thought
experiment. We might wonder how a Jane Austen would have judged the
worldly wisdom of the “Sage of Königsberg.” What help would she have
thought it offered young men, and how would she have judged what it
said of women, young or old? I conjure up yet another scenario: I cannot
help imagining the wry smile of condescension that would have sprung up
on the face of La Rochefoucauld or his companion, Madame de Lafayette,
a century earlier. Ah, oui, I can hear them whisper to one another, un vrai
professeur!
41 See Fischer (2008) for a characterization of the later development of this discourse.
42 See Zammito (2002), 301 ff.
43 “The Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View remained a stray piece [ein erratischer Block]
in the history of sciences” (Brandt (1999), 43).
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Index
Abbé de St. Pierre, 198, 209, 212, 213, 227 Berkeley, George, 51, 54
Abegg, Johann Friedrich, 191 Bernasconi, Robert, 244
abstraction, 23, 46–7, 205 Bestimmung, 151, 153, 159, 164, 175, 177, 183,
Académie royale des sciences et belles lettres, 15 217–20, 222–3, 224, 225, 226, 227–8, 246
adaptationism, 200 Bible, 191
Addison, Joseph, 13 biography, 48
Adickes, Erich, 15 birds, 219
adultery, 197 blindness, 52, 66, 69
affects, 24, 90, 93, 94–8, 100–6, 109–13, 139–42, Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 244, 245
143, 149, 162 Bödeker, Hans Erich, 236
affinity, 33, 158 Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, 13
African (people), 204, 205, 244 Borges, Maria, 102, 104–5, 106
agency, 93, 104, 106, 111, 133, 134, 135, 140, 141 Brandt, Reinhard, 2, 4, 15, 127, 206, 214, 217,
agriculture, 146, 170, 200 228, 230, 232, 235, 240, 242, 246, 247, 248
Allais, Lucy, 66 Buffon, George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de, 192–5,
Allison, Henry, 104, 117 196, 197, 198, 199, 207, 244
ambition, 96, 147–8 Burke, Edmund, 13
Americans (people), 81, 204, 205
angels, 16, 226 Camper, Peter, 192, 193
anger, 24, 95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 105–6, 108, 111, 140, Carhart, Michael, 247
198 Cassirer, Ernst, 231
animalism, 192–5, 207 categorical imperative, 116–18, 144, 240
apperception, 26, 27 causation, 54, 70
aptitudes, 78, 134, 165, 175, 177, 184, 185, 187, 188, character (moral), 32–3, 35, 187–8, 189, 232
189, 233 chastity, 197
Arens, Katherine, 93 children, 115, 129–30, 188, 203, 208
Asian (people), 204, 205, 223 Chinese (people), 205
association, 33, 51, 70, 73, 75, 158 Ciafardone, Raffaele, 217, 236
attention, 26, 28, 46–7, 61, 65, 88, 113, 157 civil society, 80, 169, 193, 198, 200, 202–3, 204
Augustine, St, 198 Clewis, Robert, 104, 112, 166
autonomy, 166, 206, 231 climate, 79, 153, 212, 225
avarice, 98, 139, 145, 148 Cohen, Alix, 5, 7, 166, 244
Comenius, Johann Amos, 189
Barnard, Alan, 2 compassion, 24
Baron, Marcia, 104 competitiveness, 139
Basedow, Johann Bernhard, 151, 188, 212, 213 Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat,
Baumgarten, Alexander, 10, 11–12, 13, 21, 43, 45, 195, 206
46, 72, 73, 95, 139, 155, 165 co-operation, 25
Beck, Lewis White, 248 cosmopolitanism, 25, 213, 228, 230, 242
benevolence, 28, 150, 199, 208 courage, 141–2, 162
Bergk, Johann Adam, 39, 127 cowardliness, 201, 217
265
266 Index
creation, 78, 192 folly, 71
critical philosophy, 173, 178, 180, 185, 188, 192 foolishness, 71
culture, 48, 103, 145, 175, 178, 191–210, 215, foresight, 33, 34, 169, 174
219–20, 222–3, 225–6, 236, 241–2 Foucault, Michel, 3
freedom, 104–5, 114–32, 206–7, 208
David-Ménard, Monique, 7 French (people), 79, 82, 83, 241, 242, 243
Dean, Richard, 118 fright, 96, 102
dementia, 71 frugality, 120, 199
desire, 38, 89, 94–5, 96, 97, 98–101, 102–4, Fusil, C. A., 209
106–7, 110–11, 118, 121, 133–50, 155, 161–4,
177, 197, 225, 245 gallantry, 28, 197
developmental variation, 77, 222 Gause, Fritz, 230
De Witt, Janelle, 142 Gemüth, 31, 155–8, 160, 161, 162–3, 165, 169
dexterity, 199, 218 gender, 2, 7, 12, 78, 79, 81, 82, 84
Diamond, Jared, 205 genius, 76, 84, 239
Diderot, Denis, 209 geography, 40, 59, 152, 154, 212, 233
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 22 George, Rolf, 231
disgust, 161, 163 Gerard, Alexander, 13
diversity, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80–1, 84, 217 German (people), 74, 79, 82, 239, 242
domination, 98, 123, 124, 125, 146, 147, 205, 207 Gesinnung, 186
Dougherty, Frank, 244 Girtanner, Christoph, 244
duty, 85, 109, 111, 117, 135, 139, 142, 150, 177, 189, God, 13, 14, 16, 55, 67, 168, 169, 188, 192, 225, 226
199, 208, 223 government, 184, 185, 205, 245, 246
Dyck, Corey W., 153 greed, 98, 147–8
dynamics, 68 Greek (people), 205
Greene, John C., 193
education, 17, 26–7, 78, 91, 129, 131–2, 159, 167, Gregor, Mary, 4
169, 170, 172–90, 196, 202, 206, 212, 213, Gulyga, Arsenji, 231
222, 224, 231, 232–5, 236–7, 238
egoism, 26, 46, 155 Haller, Albrecht, 16
embarrassment, 20, 26, 48 happiness, 4, 6, 102, 103, 108–9, 110, 113, 115, 118,
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 148, 149 121–2, 123–5, 126–7, 128, 129–30, 135, 137–8,
emotions, 22, 93, 96, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, 112, 144, 149, 156, 158, 160–1, 162, 167, 176, 186,
142 187, 198, 201–2, 206, 209, 222–3, 236
empirical psychology, 12, 20–1, 38, 40, 42–3, Harley, David Allen, 243
44–5, 46–7, 49, 53, 98–100, 102, 107, 127, harmony, 31, 114, 166
128, 130, 139, 153, 154–64, 192, 246 health, 20, 27, 120, 126, 138, 140, 160, 188, 201
empiricism, 235, 242 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 148, 149
English (people), 74, 82, 83, 243 Heidegger, Martin, 35
enthusiasm, 24, 104, 112, 115, 118, 131–2, 140, 149, Heinz, Marion, 11
152, 158–9 Helvétius, Claude Adrien, 13
Epicurus, 25, 192 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 208, 242
equanimity, 25, 33, 161, 171 Herrmann, Ulrich, 236
ethology, 220, 221 Herz, Marcus, 41
extramission theory, 54 Hinchman, Edward, 106
Eze, Emmanuel, 2, 7, 81, 244 Hindus (people), 81, 205
Hinske, Norbert, 2, 231, 236
Fall (of Adam and Eve), 199, 201, 203 Hippel, Theodor von, 206
fanaticism, 24, 71 history (discipline), 48, 154, 165, 203–4
fear, 29, 98, 102, 138, 140, 141, 142, 148, 157, 198 Hobbes, Thomas, 11, 109, 198, 207, 208
Fellows, Otis, 196, 197 Holzhey, Helmut, 236
Ferrari, Jean, 3 Home, Henry (Lord Kames), 13, 193, 195, 202,
Fielding, Henry, 13 206
Firla, Monika, 3 Sketches on Human History, 196
Fischer, Joachim, 248 honour, 201, 202, 205
Index 267
Hull, Isabel, 241 Inquiry concerning the Distinctness of the
humanity (idea of ), 117 Principles of Natural Theology and Morality,
formula of, 129 114
Hume, David, 70, 241, 243, 244 Lectures on Ethics, 105, 114, 115, 116, 117, 142,
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 191 151
Huneman, Phillippe, 156, 214 Lectures on Logic, 1, 46
hunting, 145, 200 Lectures on Metaphysics, 43, 46, 49
Hutcheson, Frances, 95, 139, 198 Lectures on Natural Right, 114, 116
Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions Lectures on Pedagogy, 115, 118, 215–16, 218
and Affections, 96, 139 Lectures on Physical Geography, 12, 14, 212
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,
idiocy, 71 68
ignorance, 74, 159 Metaphysics of Morals, 93, 94, 109, 111, 117, 122,
illusion, 27–8, 49, 53–6, 67, 74, 90 188, 235
imagination (productive/reproductive), 69–70 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
inclination Sublime, 2, 10, 11, 114, 122, 130, 237
natural, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130–2, 136 Of the Different Races of Human Beings, 2, 215
reasonable, 124 On the Use of Teleological Principles in
incorporation thesis, 104–5 Philosophy, 2, 215
Indian (people), 81, 204–5, 216 The Only Possible Argument in Support of a
industry, 201, 202 Demonstration of the Existence of God, 15
infanticide, 197 Opus postumum, 130
insanity/mental illness, 47, 71, 181 Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, 43, 63,
intelligence, 55, 56, 156–7 66
intersubjectivity, 63, 75 Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,
109–10, 125, 135–6, 177, 188
Jachmann, Reinhold Bernhard, 1 Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical
Jauch, Ursula Pia, 241 Project, 187, 212
Joucourt, Louis de, 198 Universal Natural History and Theory of the
justice, 132, 164, 166, 185, 201, 225, 227 Heavens, 14–15
Käuser, Andreas, 230
Kaag, John, 2 Keipert, Helmut, 13
Kant, Immanuel Kim, Soo Bae, 3
Announcement of the Programme for his Kleingeld, Pauline, 7, 213, 224, 230, 242
Lectures for the Winter Semester 1765–6, 178, Königsberg Albertina, 12
233 Kopitzsch, Frank, 235
An Answer to the Question: What Is Kuehn, Manfred, 1, 2, 5, 40, 231, 242
Enlightenment?, 177, 184
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, labour, 201
2, 12, 18, 78, 94, 123, 130, 133, 221, 248 La Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de, 13, 198
The Conflict of the Faculties, 220 Larrimore, Mark, 2, 7, 81, 244
Conjectural Beginning of Human History, 175 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 239
Critique of Practical Reason, 93, 128, 176–7, La Vopa, Anthony, 231
184, 186 laziness, 74, 80, 201, 202, 217
Critique of Pure Reason, 6, 16, 19, 26, 27, 42, Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, Bernard, 13
57–8, 127, 181, 182–3, 186 Lehmann, Gerhard, 116, 231
Critique of the Power of Judgment, 11, 32, 35, Leiberwirth, Rolf, 236
36 Leibniz, Gottfried, 15, 73, 193, 204, 226
Dreams of a Spirit Seer, 11 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 13, 191
The End of All Things, 159 Pope ein Metaphysiker, 15
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 6, Lestition, Steven, 1, 247
93, 114, 116–17, 118, 129, 137, 138, 141, 147, libertinism, 196
155, 160, 162, 166, 223 Linnaeus, Carl, 84, 192, 193, 199, 244
Idea for a Universal History with a Locke, John, 11, 43, 131, 193, 207
Cosmopolitan Aim, 187, 214, 224, 245 logic, 12, 26, 48
268 Index
Louden, Robert, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 79, 125, 127, 240, Park, Peter K. J., 231
244 passions, 17, 94–8, 106–13, 139–40, 143–50, 161,
love, 28, 98, 121, 141, 142, 147, 150, 163, 197, 208 162, 171, 189, 198, 201, 207
Lovejoy, Arthur O., 193 passivity, 19, 49, 60, 74, 144
Lucretius, 191, 196 Pastore, Nicholas, 52
pedantry, 152, 154, 232, 234
McBay Merritt, Melissa, 91 personality, 147, 156, 157, 169, 176,
McCarty, Richard, 142 177
magnitude, 72 pessimism, 191, 195
Makkreel, Rudolf, 7 Pfotnauer, Helmut, 247
Mandeville, Bernard de, 198, 200 philosophy of right, 126
Manganoro, Paolo, 3 physics, 12, 42–3, 44, 47, 174, 192, 204
Marquard, Odo, 200, 230 Platner, Ernst, 10, 41, 152, 220, 234
Marshall, Peter J., 243 pleasure, 25, 29, 30, 31–2, 49, 60, 61, 67, 80, 86,
masturbation, 197 94, 99–100, 101, 121, 133, 134–5, 136–7, 142,
maturity, 37, 166, 167, 168, 177, 214, 218, 245 152, 155, 156, 159–61, 162–3, 164, 171
Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de pluralism, 46
Système de la nature, 16 Poles (people), 243
Maurer, Michael, 242 politeness, 28
Mauser, Wolfram, 236 political philosophy, 245
mechanics, 198 polygamy, 195
melancholy, 47 Pope, Alexander, 13, 14, 15–16
Melton, James Van Horn, 235 Essay on Man, 13, 15
memory, 33–4, 41, 44, 48, 86–7, 88 Porterfield, William, 51
mendacity, 139 possession, 23
Mendelssohn, Moses, 155, 236 Potesta, Andrea, 3
Mensch, Jennifer, 156, 158 power of choice (Willkür/Willkühr), 120, 125,
Mikkola, Mari, 7 126, 177
Milton, John, 13 practical philosophy, 25, 40, 172
misanthropy, 159, 169, 200 pragmatic knowledge, 45, 87–8, 174
misery, 137, 156, 167, 196, 201 Priestley, Joseph, 52, 54
misogyny, 159, 169 primary/secondary quality distinction, 66
misology, 152, 159, 169, 176, 181 prostitution, 197
monogamy, 195 Providence, 149, 192, 195, 196, 200, 203, 204,
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 13 205, 209, 227
moral law, 107, 110, 116–17, 128, 142, 148, 187, prudence, 4, 40, 45, 47, 59, 87, 113, 134, 140, 143,
189, 201 149, 152, 154, 174–5
Moravia, Sergio, 230, 236 puberty, 196
Morrisson, Iain, 108 pugnacity, 199, 200, 225
Moscati, Peter, 153, 175, 194, 244, 245
Munzel, G. Felicitas, 125, 153, 156, 240, 241 race, 2, 7, 78–9, 81, 153, 205, 212, 223–4, 238, 240,
243–4
nationality, 79, 81 radical evil, 113, 135–6, 148
natural capacities, 40, 85 Raynal, Guillaume Thomas François, 195,
natural knowledge, 42, 45, 154 209
natural man, 11, 198, 208 reflexive awareness, 22
nobility, 63, 64 Reid, Thomas, 51
novelty, 73 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 191, 245
Nowicki, Hans-Peter, 230 reputation, 120, 138, 162, 203
Ritzel, Wolfgang, 231, 232
old age, 166, 206 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 2, 10, 16, 17, 148, 155,
O’Neill, Onora, 91 159, 169, 175, 185, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199,
201, 202, 207, 208, 209, 241, 244, 245
pacifism, 198, 209 Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, 10–11,
paradoxes, 74, 144, 196, 210 137, 170, 193, 244
Index 269
Émile, 10, 167–8, 188 summum bonum, 115
Of the Social Contract, or Principles of Political superiority, 128, 146, 147, 148
Right, 202 Swift, Jonathan, 13
Russians (people), 243 systematicity, 74, 235
satisfaction, 97, 119, 120–2, 123, 124, 126–7, talents, 76–85, 89, 120, 167, 185, 200–1, 205, 216,
136–7, 138, 144 222, 225, 227
Scheible, Heinz, 12 taxonomy, 192
Schlapp, Otto, 14 temperaments, 12, 79–80, 82, 85–7, 93, 103,
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 2, 247 237–8, 239
Schmidt, Claudia, 59, 66, 77, 88, 226 theodicy, 204, 226
Schneiders, Werner, 231, 236 Thomasius, Christian, 236, 241
Schöndörffer, Otto, 231 Tonelli, Giorgio, 230
Schott, Robin, 7 touch, 22, 28, 30, 38, 49, 50, 51, 52–3, 61, 62, 63,
Schröder, Hannelore, 241 67–8, 69
secretiveness, 201 transcendental
secularisation, 191–2, 209 deduction, 69
self-consciousness, 11, 19, 22, 25, 26–7, 77, 153, idealism, 4, 171
155, 156 truth, 72, 73, 74, 89, 91
self-determination, 33, 134–5, 245 Turks (people), 243
self-governance, 98, 100, 112 Turner, R. Steven, 236
self-love, 108, 110, 132, 135 tyranny, 147–8
self-observation, 18, 20, 26, 47–9 Tyson, Edward, 193
self-prescription, 35
self-preservation, 181, 199 unsociable sociability, 79, 139, 148, 224, 225–6
sensus communis, 36, 91 utilitarianism, 6, 223
servility, 139
Seven Years War, 242 vainglory, 98
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord, 13, Van de Pitte, Frederick, 3
149, 198 vegetarianism, 194, 199
An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit, 149 Velkley, Richard L., 153
Shakespeare, William, 13 vengeance, 108–9, 132, 146
shame, 102, 140 Verri, Pietro
Shell, Susan, 3, 7, 153 Discourse on Pleasure and Pain, 171
sight, 28, 52, 62–6, 67 vice, 89, 139, 163, 167, 175, 196, 197, 198, 200,
silliness, 71 201, 245
sin, original. See Fall (of Adam and Eve) Vidal, Fernando, 40
smell, 22, 28, 30, 49–50, 61, 63 virility, 196
Smith, Adam, 199, 224 virtue, 6, 15, 94, 101, 109, 111–13, 123–4, 140, 141,
Sorenson, Kelley, 104, 112 143, 159, 163, 167, 182, 186, 196, 198, 200–2,
speech, 30, 175–6, 178, 193 203, 223
spirit (Geist), 21, 23, 155–7, 170, 194 vitalism, 4, 8, 28–32, 61, 101, 156, 160, 163
spontaneity, 27, 155, 170, 206 Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de, 13, 195, 198
Stanhope, Philipp Dormer (Earl of Vorländer, Karl, 232
Chesterfield), 13 Vyverberg, Henry, 195
Stark, Werner, 1, 4, 38, 173, 214, 240, 241
state of nature, 11, 195, 197, 198, 201–2, 245 Waal, Frans de, 229
Stavenhagen, Kurt, 230 Warda, Arthur, 16
Sterne, Laurence, 13 warfare, 146, 195, 196, 198
Stoicism, 23–5, 136 Waschkies, Hans-Joachim, 15
Strawson, Peter Frederick, 64, 127 Watkins, Eric, 7, 58
Sturm, Thomas, 4, 41, 125, 214, 220, 238, 240, Waxman, Wayne, 158
246 wealth, 120, 126, 138, 147, 162, 195
sublime, 11, 29, 31–2, 33 Weber, Max, 222
suicide, 142 weeping, 140
270 Index
Weis, Norbert, 230 women, 147, 166, 169, 195, 197, 205–6, 238, 241–2
Wellman, Chad, 247 Wood, Allen, 1, 4, 42, 79, 91, 209, 240
Westlinning, Margot, 242 world history (Welthistorie), 164–9
Will (Wille), 124, 125, 177
Williams, Bernard, 150 xenophobia, 199
Wilson, Catherine, 1, 7, 77
Wilson, Edward Osborne, 228–9 Young, Edward, 13
Wilson, Holly L., 3, 40, 125, 215 youth, 90, 166, 196, 232, 234
wisdom, 5, 25, 33, 36, 40, 56, 82, 88, 152, 166, 178,
183, 194, 231–2, 234, 236, 239, 240, 246 Zammito, John, 1, 2, 3, 7, 41, 78, 79, 87, 156, 208
wit, 70–1, 88, 141 Zimmerli, Walther, 236
Wolff, Christian, 236 Zöller, Gunter, 158, 215, 226
c a mb r idg e cr i tica l g u i d es
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality

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Kant’s Observations and Remarks
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Augustine’s City of God
edited by james wetzel
Descartes’ Meditations
edited by karen detlefsen
Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
e dit ed b y g or d on m icha l so n
Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology
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KANT’S L E C T U R E S O N A N T H R O P O L O G Y

Kant’s lectures on anthropology, which formed the basis of his Anthro-

a l i x c o h e n is Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Titles published in this series:

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of tables page vii

5.1 Varieties of understanding page 77

alix cohen is Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is

A Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798),

Kant intended his lectures on anthropology to teach students how to apply

Kant’s lectures on anthropology:

Thanks to the diligence of Königsberg students and coincidences regarding

Self-cognition and self-assessment

1. The problematic nature of inner sense

What is left as a more reasonable alternative to human self-observation

2. Developing soul into mind and spirit

The capacity to be modified, or to be passive, one calls the lower power

1 ‘Reflexive awareness’ is a translation of Innewerden and denotes a pre-reflective sense of what is

3. Appropriate ways of attending to oneself

4. Vital sense, interior sense and self-assessment

5. Character and reason

Kant on the phenomenology of touch and vision

Kant’s lectures on anthropology concern the human being as active in the

1. The scope, aims, and methods of Kant’s anthropology

1.1. Pragmatic versus physiological

The notions of attention and abstraction are derived from an understanding

1.2. The method of pragmatic anthropology: experience and observation

Skill at observing others transfers to oneself. Skill in observing others

2. The five senses

3. Touch and vision

It is worldly knowledge or pragmatic intelligence to know that the earth

Meat on the bones: Kant’s account of cognition

Though many crucial details of Kant’s account of cognition as it is devel-

Both authors contributed equally to this chapter.

1. The subject matter and cognitive architecture of the

2. The objective senses and the objects of sense

2.1. Objective versus subjective senses

2.2. Sight and hearing

2.4. A priori versus empirical conditions of experience

Distinctness both presupposes and is preceded by order (VA-Mrongovius

32 For discussion of this issue, see Watkins (2013).

The anthropology of cognition and its

The aim of this chapter is to bring to light the anthropological dimension

1. Nature’s intentions for human cognition

Superior understanding Inferior understanding

Criterion Definition Type Nature’s purpose

Gender Sex Male, female

Temperaments Strengths Weaknesses

Sanguine Popular, witty, lively Trivial, thoughtless, disorderly

Table 5.4. Cognitive disparities between nationsa

Nations Strengths Weaknesses

French Daring, inspired, witty Risk-taking, superficial

Table 5.5. Cognitive variations between gendersa

Gender Strengths Weaknesses

Feminine Shrewd, good at investigating Immature about purposes, delicate,

complement each other in order to form a unified whole, as exemplified

2. The pragmatic dimension of Kant’s anthropology of cognition

3. The condition of possibility of the pragmatic dimension of

15 VA-Friedländer 25:499–502, 25:544–5; VA-Mrongovius 25:1302–8; A 7:165–75, 7:202–21.