Patrick Frierson

Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht

In 1773, Kant cancelled a course in theoretical physics – due to lack of enrollment – and taught “Anthropology” in its place. From that time, Kant taught Anthropology every winter semester until he retired in 1796. The anthropology course was one of two courses in “Weltkenntnis” that Kant taught every year. The other, physical geography, was taught in the Summer semester. When he retired, Kant compiled the notes from his anthropology lecture course into Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, the last publication before his death in 1804. The book was meant both as a “Handbuch” (7:122) and as a popular work, that could “von jedermann selbst von der Dame bey der Toilette gelesen warden” (25: 856-7, cf. 25: 1213). 2000 copies of this work were published in its first printing, more that any of Kant’s previous works (cf. Brandt 1999), and the book was reviewed at least 11 times within two years of its publication, including a now famous review by Friedrich Schleiermacher (initially published in the Athaeneaum, reprinted in Vörlander 1980).

The Anthropologie was no accident of history. Kant was the first to introduce anthropologie as a distinct academic discipline in Germany (cf. van de Pitte: 3; Erdmann I:48), and he had high hopes for his new course. He explains in a letter to Herz written near the end of 1773,

Ich lese in diesem Winter zum zweyten mal ein collegium privatum der Anthropologie welches ich ietzt zu einer ordentlichen academischen disciplin zu machen gedenke. Allein mein Plan ist gantz anders. Die Absicht die ich habe ist durch dieselbe die Qvellen aller Wissenschaften die der Sitten der Geschiklichkeit des Umganges der Methode Menschen zu bilden u. zu regiren mithin alles Praktischen zu eröfnen. Da suche ich alsdenn mehr Phänomena u. ihre Gesetze als die erste Gründe der Möglichkeit der modification der menschlichen Natur Überhaupt. Daher die subtile u. in meinen Augen auf ewig vergebliche Untersuchung über die Art wie die organe des Korper mit den Gedanken in Verbindung stehen ganz wegfällt. Ich bin unabläßig so bey der Beobachtung selbst im gemeinen Leben daß meine Zuhörer vom ersten Anfange bis zu Ende niemals eine trokene sondern durch den Anlaß den sie haben unaufhörlich ihre gewöhnliche Erfahrung mit meinen Bemerkungen zu vergleichen iederzeit eine unterhaltende Beschäftigung habe. Ich arbeite in Zwischenzeiten daran, aus dieser in meinen Augen sehr angenehmen Beobachtungslehre eine Vorübung der Geschiklichkeit der Klugheit und selbst der Weisheit vor die academische Iugend zu machen welche nebst der physischen geographie von aller andern Unterweisung unterschieden ist und die Kentnis der Welt heissen kan. (10: 145-6)

Kant’s new “academic discipline,” consisting primarily in “discussing phenomena and their laws,” is characterized by popularity – “entertaining and never dry” – and practical application.

There were at least three important antecedents to Kant’s anthropology. First, from the beginning of his teaching career in 1755, Kant offered a course in Physical Geography. The precise role of this course in the origin of Kant’s anthropology has been disputed (cf. Erdmann 1882, Brandt 1999, Adickes 1924-1925 and Zammitto 2002), but like Anthropologie, Physical Geography was “a part of Weltkenntniß” (9:157), and it sought “den Menschen näher mit sich selbst bekannt zu machen” (2:9). Kant’s posthumous physical geography text even includes “Kenntniß des Menschen” (9:157). A second and more important antecedent is Kant’s lectures on the empirical psychology portion of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica (cf. Louden 2000: 65, Brandt 1999, Hinske 1966). When Kant began lecturing on Anthropology, he used this portion of Baumgarten’s text, on which he had lectured almost every year since 1755 as part of his course in Metaphysics (cf. Stark 1993:323-6). Much in Kant’s anthropology already appears in empirical psychology portions of his metaphysics lectures, and the overall structure of the first half of the Anthropologie is largely dictated by Baumgarten’s text. The third source for Kant’s Anthropologie is a series of reflections on character that began in his Beobachtungen and related Bemerkungen and continue through Kant’s Reflexionen on anthropologie. The Beobachtungen include detailed discussions of different temperaments, sexes, and nations, all of which reappear in Anthropologie.

Kant’s anthropology is a “Wißenschafft des Menschen” (25:7), “Eine Lehre von der Kenntnis des Menschen, systematisch abgefaßt” (7:119). Travel, literature, and observation of different people in one’s hometown are important sources of anthropological knowledge. But these depend on a prior “Menschenkenntnis” that Kant identifies as a “Generalkenntnis” (7:120) or an “aufmercksames Auge” (25:734). Although it includes some discussions of differences between people, Kant’s anthropology focuses on providing general accounts of human beings and is thus closer to contemporary psychology than contemporary anthropology.

Kant distinguishes anthropology, a general study of human beings, from physical geography, which focuses on differences between people and places, and also from “metaphysics,” by which Kant sometimes means traditional rationalist metaphysics (e.g. 7:130) and sometimes his own transcendental philosophy (7:143). Though “systematically formulated,” anthropology is a Kenntnis rather than a Wissenschaft in the strict sense (cf. 7:120, cf. 2:443; 15:659; 25:9, 854; though contrast 7:121). Periodically, Kant avoids as “merely metaphysical” such questions as the existence of an external world or the nature of things in themselves (7:130, 142-3). He mentions these issues “simply in order to stop the offenses of the speculative mind in regard to this question” (7:143). Moreover, Kant’s anthropology, though relevant to life (“pragmatic”), is also not the same as ethics or moral philosophy. Kant distinguishes moral philosophy from moral anthropology throughout his published writings in ethics (cf. GMS 4:389-90, 410-2, 425; MS 6:217). In the Anthropologie, Kant clarifies that distinction by specifically excluding various topics as “outside the field of anthropology,” thus giving some clearer sense of where anthropology ends and morals take over (e.g. 7:209).

In distinguishing his anthropology from metaphysics and from pure moral philosophy, Kant often contrasts knowledge “für die Schule” and “für das Leben” (2:443), a distinction that goes to the heart of what Kant means by calling his anthropology “pragmatic.” Kant contrasts pragmatic anthropology from “physiological” or speculative anthropology in that :

Die physiologische Menschenkenntniß geht auf die Erforschung dessen, was die Natur aus dem Menschen macht, die pragmatische auf das, was er als freihandelndes Wesen aus sich selber macht, oder machen kann und soll. — Wer den Naturursachen nachgrübelt, worauf z.B. das Erinnerungsvermögen beruhen möge, kann über die im Gehirn zurückbleibenden Spuren von Eindrücken, welche die erlittenen Empfindungen hinterlassen, hin und her . . . vernünfteln; muß aber dabei gestehen: daß er in diesem Spiel seiner Vorstellungen bloßer Zuschauer sei . . .. Wenn er aber die Wahrnehmungen über das, was dem Gedächtniß hinderlich oder beförderlich befunden worden, dazu benutzt, um es zu erweitern oder gewandt zu machen, und hiezu die Kenntniß des Menschen braucht, so würde dieses einen Theil der Anthropologie in pragmatischer Absicht ausmachen . . .. (7:119)

Kant’s prime target here is his contemporary Ernst Platner, whose Anthropologie (reviewed by Marcus Herz) sought to overcome the dichotomy between psychology and physiology with an account of the mind-body relationship. In contrast to Platner’s “scholastic” (25:856, cf. 25:472, 1120) anthropology, Kant investigates humans with emphasis on facts that one can put to use.

At the beginning of his Anthropology, Kant suggests that anthropology does not, strictly speaking, have any “Quellen” (7:121), but he mentions three different sorts of observation that provide “Mittel” for anthropology: “[1] Travel . . ., even . . . only . . . reading books of travel[; 2] . . . interaction with one’s fellowmen at home; . . . which presupposes [3] the knowledge of man” (7:120). Anthropology starts with “Menschenkenntnis,” which Kant quickly makes clear is a “Generalkenntnis” (7: 120). This general Menschenkenntnis has its source in “inner sense” or “inner experience, according to which he judges others, [and which] is of great importance” (7: 398, 143; cf. 25: 243, 471, 473). To this general Meschenkenntniß one adds observations “of one’s fellowmen at home” (7:120, cf. 25:734), and eventually also travel or reading books of travel. Kant also suggests that literature – “[p]lays, novels, histories, and various biographies” (25:734, cf. 7:121, 163; 25: 472, 857-8, 1213) – serves as a valuable source of anthropological insight.

Even with all of these “Hilfsmittel” (7:121), anthropologie has important limitations. With respect to introspection, Kant emphasizes numerous difficulties with self-observation: one cannot observe oneself without being aware of it, one often mistakes personal habits as universal facts of human nature (7:121, 143), experiments in inner sense are impossible (4:470, 15:801), and inner sense is not susceptible to the mathematization necessary for strict science (4:470-1). Moreover, self-observation can promote a dangerous theoretical egoism if one “considers it unnecessary to also test his judgment by the understanding of others” (7:128), which can even lead to fanaticism (cf. 7:132-34, 161-62). Further problems arise with observation of others and the use of novels, history, and other literature for anthropology. One mistakes habits that have become “second nature” for essential facts about human beings, and “if a human being notices that someone is . . . trying to study him, he . . . either . . . cannot show himself as he really is; or he . . . does not want to be known as he is” (7:121).

In his review of Kant’s Anthropologie, Friedrich Schleiermacher called it a “Sammlung von Trivialitäten” (Schleiermacher 1799: 300). This is a substantial exaggeration, but one does find Kant discussing a remarkable range of topics, often in ways that are at best quasi-systematic. Some of these minor topics, such as sociability (cf. 7:159, 176-7, 207, 240-1) or the dangers of mysticism and religious enthusiasm (7:161, 167, 181, 187-9, 191-2, 195, 202, 208-9), reflect prominent concerns of Kant’s. Others relate to more minor topics that arise elsewhere in Kant’s works, such as politeness (7:151-3) or suicide and dueling (7:258-9, cf. MS 6:422-3, 336). But dozens of topics, such as why men should not cry (7:255-6, 263), the nature and purpose of sleep and dreaming (7:166, 175, 189-90), or the value of music (7:174) are simply issues on which Kant wanted to express his views.

In terms of its general approach, much of Kant’s Anthropology involves taxonomies of human faculties and characteristics, including classifications of different faculties of soul (7:140-282), natural temperaments (7:286-91), “Schwächen und Krankheiten der Seele” (7:202-17), and passions and affects (7:254-75). These offer the entertainment of “occasions and invitations” for relating anthropology to cases from one’s own life (cf. 7:121-2; 10:146-7), and they provide necessary “general knowledge” from which one can “broaden the range of anthropology” through observation and travel (25:244, cf. 7:122).

Despite its hodge-podge nature, there is an overall structure to Anthropologie, even if not a Leitidee governing the whole (cf. Brandt 1999). It is divided into two overall sections. The first, “Anthropologische Didaktik,” derives from Kant’s lectures on empirical psychology, the structure of which follows Baumgarten. Kant keeps Baumgarten’s distinction between higher and lower faculties but replaces a two-fold distinction between cognitive and appetitive faculties with a three-fold distinction between cognition, feeling, and desire. In the first half of the Anthropologie, then, Kant discusses the higher and lower faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire. The second section of the Anthropologie, which Kant calls “Die anthropologische Characteristik,” discusses human “character” in its many forms, including both natural character – “what can be made of the human being” – and moral character – “what he is prepared to make of himself” (7: 285). Here Kant discusses the character of individuals – “the character of the person” – as well as the character of different sexes, Volks, races, and the human species as a whole.

Of the three faculties in Part One, cognition gets the most extensive treatment. Before discussing cognition, Kant offers general remarks about the overall methodology of Anthropologie. For example, he discusses “Bewußtsein seiner selbst,” claiming that “the fact that the human being can have the ‘I’ in his representations raises him infinitely above all other living beings on earth” (7:127), while pointing out risks and limitations of this “I,” such as egoism (which, in its logical, aesthetic, and practical forms, is discussed throughout the book). Kant then turns to specific powers of cognition. The lower cognitive power – “Sinnlichkeit” – is passive and receptive; it includes not only the 5 external senses but also inner sense and the imagination. Kant offers an extensive “Apologie für die Sinnlichkeit” (7:143-6) in which he defends it against charges that it confuses, dominates, and deceives, and Kant discusses “Sinnenschein” (7:149-53), including the moral importance of politeness as a “permissible moral illusion” (7:151-3). Kant then treats each of the five senses and inner sense in turn (7:161-2, cf. 7:132-4) and ends with pragmatic applications: “the causes that increase or decrease sense impressions” (7:162). After the senses, Kant turns to the imagination, also part of “sensibility.” He classifies different sorts of imagination – e.g. productive vs. reproductive, memory vs. foresight (7:182) – and specifies principles such as association (7:176) and affinity (7:177) governing imagination. Given his pragmatic purpose, Kant emphasizes facts that can be used to “hinder or promote” these faculties.

Kant turns next to the higher faculties of cognition. He calls the higher faculty as a whole the “understanding” (7:196), but distinguishes this general higher faculty into the “understanding . . . in a particular sense, . . . judgment, and reason” (7:196-7):

[U]nderstanding is the faculty of rules, and the power of judgment the faculty of discovering the particular in so far as it is an instance of these rules, [and] reason is the faculty of deriving the particular from the universal and thus of representing it according to principles and as necessary. (7:199)

This account of the higher faculties fits with Kant’s lectures and published works, although here Kant gives his discussion a distinctively empirical and pragmatic cast. In particular, Kant makes “observations about human beings, how one differs from another in these mental endowments or in their habitual use or misuse, first in a healthy soul, and then also in mental illness” (7:197), and he draws together his observations into a simple set of practical “maxims” which “can be made unalterable commands” for the right use of one’s cognitive faculties (7:228).

Kant’s account of the faculties of feeling and desire are shorter than that of cognition. With respect to feeling, Kant’s focus is on sensuous (rather than intellectual) pleasure. Sensuous pleasure includes both “enjoyment” (the “agreeable”) and “taste” (aesthetic pleasure), which is “partly sensuous, partly intellectual” (7:230, 239). With respect to the former, Kant discusses the nature of pleasure and pain pragmatically and emphasizes that because “pain must always precede every enjoyment” (7:231), work “is the best way of enjoying one’s life” (7:232, cf. 7:276). With respect to the latter, Kant discusses from an anthropological-psychological point of view many of the themes that arise in his aesthetics in the Critique of Judgment, including the universal nature of aesthetic judgment, the basis of aesthetic judgment in the free play between imagination and understanding, and the way in which taste “prepares” one for morality (7:240-4).

Kant’s discussion of the faculty of desire includes only a brief overview of the nature of desire in general (7:251, 265). The chapter focuses on affects and passions, which both “shut out the sovereignty of reason” (7:251), though affects are illnesses of the faculty of feeling, while passions are illnesses of the faculty of desire. Kant makes clear here that affects and passions do not exhaust the realm of feelings or desires. Rather, affects are defective feelings, when a “feeling of a pleasure or displeasure at a particular moment . . . does not give rise to reflection . . . [on] whether one should submit to it or reject it,” while passions are defects of the faculty of desire, when an “inclination . . . can hardly, or not at all, be controlled by reason” (7:251).

Kant concludes his “Anthropologische Didaktik” with a discussion of the “highest physical” and “highest moral-physical” goods. The former, “resting after work” (7:276), returns to the conclusion of his account of sensible pleasure; the latter, “a good meal in good company” (7:278), is the culmination of a minor theme of Kant’s work (the importance of sociability and the danger of egoism).

Having brought the first part of his anthropology to a close with a “highest good” that solves the problems of egoism with which the book began, Kant turns to the second part of his Anthropologie, the discussion of character. Whereas the the first part of the Anthropologie had precedent in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, this second part brings together concerns from Kant’s Beobachtungen, along with some material from his Physical Geography and writings on history and religion, in order to provide a general characterization of human beings as individuals, members of a sex, a nation, a race, and finally as members of the species as a whole.

Arguably the most important part of the Anthropologie, Kant’s account of the character of the person distinguishes between three aspects of this character, “a) his natural aptitude or natural predisposition, b) his temperament or sensibility, and c) his character purely and simply, or way of thinking” (7:285). The first two are part of one’s natural endowments; the last is one’s character as a rational being. After a short discussion of natural aptitudes, Kant discusses the four temperaments – sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic – laying out distinguishing characteristics of each and suggesting pragmatic issues for each with respect to both happiness and morals. The third sense of character – “character purely and simply, or way of thinking” – is the most important, as it “indicates what [one] is prepared to make of himself” (7:285, cf. 7:292, 119). To have a character in this sense is to “bind oneself to definite practical principles” (7:292). Kant ends his discussion of character schlechthin with “the principles that relate to character,” a set of maxims that one must follow in order to cultivate and maintain character (7:294). And Kant concludes the section with an extensive discussion of “physiognomy,” which “can never become a science” and for which “there is no longer any demand” (7:296, 297).

After discussing “the character of the [individual] person,” Kant turns to three of the most infamous sections of the Anthropologie, his discussion of the character of the sexes, of the nations, and of the races. With respect to the character of the sexes, Kant emphasizes differences between men and women, focusing on women, and he offers teleological observations about the importance of distinct sexes and “pragmatic consequences” (7:308f.) of his observations. This discussion of women, heavily influenced by Rousseau’s account of women in Emile, has rightly been seen as overemphasizing the distinctions between the sexes in a patronizing way. It also raises important systematic issues within Kant’s moral philosophy because women are portrayed as governed by norms of taste, opinion, and honor rather than principles of reason (7:308; 15:582; 25:722, 1170, 1190, 1193, 1392; cf. Brandt 1994, Jauch 1989, Kleingeld 1993, 1995, Louden 2000, and Schott 1997).

Kant’s account of the character of different nations in the Anthropologie focuses only on the “big 5” European nations: French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German. Kant presents observations that “make it possible to judge what each [nation] can expect from the other” (7:312). Some claims in these sections raise problems similar to those on women, such as the suggestion that the French have a “vivacity” which makes them “lovable” but “is not sufficiently kept in check by considered principles” (7:314). Even when pointing out various national “faults and deviations from the rule,” however, Kant does so with the aim of a “criticism [that] improves” (7:313). When it comes to other nations, Kant curtly sets aside the Russians, Poles, and Turks (7:319). Especially in his comments about the Turks, Kant’s treatment is dismissive, and when he turns to the character of the races, Kant says virtually nothing in the published Anthropologie, simply referring his readers to what Christoph Girtanner, in his Über das Kantische Prinzip für Naturgeschichte, “has presented so beautifully and thoroughly . . . in accordance with my principles” (7:320). In lectures on anthropology (cf. 25:1186-8) and physical geography (9:311f.), and in the published essays Racen, Menschenrace, and Teleolog. Prinz., one finds more of Kant’s views about different races. These views, like his brief mention of the Turks in the Anthropologie, are not flattering, and they raise similar problems as his disparaging comments about women (cf. Barkhaus 1994, Brandt 1991, 1994, 1997, 1999, Eze 1994, Firla 1997, Kleingeld 2005, Moebus 1977, Sutter 1989, Serequeberhan 1996).

Finally, Kant ends his Anthropologie with a concern that arguably provided the impetus for discussing anthropologie at all – the character of the species. This section is one of the richest in the Anthropologie, with its detailed account of human beings’ threefold rational predispositions – the technical, pragmatic, and moral – and our multifaceted vocation – rising from humanity’s “physical vocation” to “preserve his species as an animal species” (7:325) to our ultimate vocation to “rise out of evil in constant progress towards the good” (7:333). In the course of this discussion, Kant raises the important problem of human evil, discussed in greater length in his Religion, and points out that one “expects only from Providence” (7:328) the working out of humanity’s ultimate end. And thus the Anthropologie ends, with the hope of and invitation to a cosmopolitan moral task:

So [anthropology] presents the human species not as evil, but as a species of rational beings that strives among obstacles to rise out of evil in constant progress toward the good. In this its volition is generally good, but achievement is difficult because one cannot expect to reach the goal by the free agreement of individuals, but only by a progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is cosmopolitically united. (7:333)

With this call to put Kant’s pragmatic anthropology to a moralizing purpose, Kant brings his book, and his publishing career, to a close.

Gauging the systematic importantance of Kant’s Anthropologie can be challenging. In his lectures on logic, Kant famously says,

The field of philosophy . . . can be reduced to the following questions:

What can I know?

What ought I to do?

What may I hope?

What is man?

Metaphysics answers the first question, moral the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of this as anthropology. (Jäsche Logic, 9: 25, cf. 11: 429; 28: 533-4)

Given its empirical character, Anthropologie cannot contain the entirety of Kant’s philosophy. It is not a Critical or transcendental project. Rather than providing conditions of possibility for theoretical or moral judgments, Anthropologie articulates and applies practical empirical principles. Still, this work discusses many of the central themes of Kant’s philosophy from a psychogical/anthropological perspective. In this section, I briefly outline some aspects of Anthropologie that are particularly relevant to Kant’s other works, especially his three Critiques.

KrV. The “Silent Decade” during which Kant wrote the KrV was also the period in which he began lecturing in anthropologie, so Anthropologie is likely to have an important relationship to the KrV. To one accustomed to the KrV, however, Anthropologie initially seems related only by contrast. Whereas the language and arguments of the KrV are dense and difficult, Anthropologie is light and popular. And Kant’s Anthropologie separates itself from speculative, metaphysical, or theoretical enterprises, while the KrV rejects any sort of empirical or overly practical basis.

Nonetheless, Kant spends over ½ of the Anthropologie discussing human cognitive faculties, and this discussion is relevant to anyone seeking to understand the KrV. It lays out an overall Kantian map of human cognition, including details about the imagination vis a vis sensibility and understanding and a general account of how different faculties of sensibility and understanding relate. Kant’s psychological account of sensibility is an important locus for the insight that sensibility is both distinct from and inextricably linked with human understanding, an insight crucial to Kant’s critical project (cf. Caygill 2003). Moreover, some have suggested that Anthropologie provides a key to the importance of the KrV for Kant (cf. van der Pitte, Velkley 1989, Brandt 1999). The emphasis on the vocation of humanity that expresses itself in Kant’s account of character in the Anthropologie reorients Kant’s metaphysical and epistemological project as one that serves to promote the moral vocation of humankind. Finally, Kant’s emphasis on the methodological distinction between the Anthropologie and the KrV highlights the distinctively anti-empirical program of the latter while providing insight into how Kant seeks to unite anti-naturalist epistemology with a robust natural account of human beings.

Moral Philosophy. Throughout his moral philosophy, Kant emphasizes that although morals not be based on anthropology (cf. 4:389, 6:217), it nonetheless applies to and even requires anthropology (4:388, cf. 6:217). Although Kant’s Anthropologie cannot be identified with this “moral anthropology” (cf. Brandt 1999, 2003, Brandt and Stark 1997), anthropology is relevant to moral philosophy (10:146, cf. Shell 2003, Stark 2003, Van de Pitte 1971: 3; Louden 2000, Wood 1999, Frierson 2003; Grenberg 1999, 2001, Wilson 1997). The Anthropologie is morally relevant in at least four ways. First, it includes background for psychological concepts – such as pleasure, desire, passion, predisposition, and character – that Kant uses in his moral philosophy. Second, Anthropologie includes valuable data for specifying and carrying out one’s duties, especially with regard to “a human being’s imperfect duties to himself . . . to develop and increase his natural perfection, that is, for a pragmatic purpose” (6:444). Third, especially in its discussions of politeness, affects and passions, and character, Anthropologie includes, though is not identical with, the specifically moral anthropology that is needed for “the development, spreading, and strengthening of moral principles” (6:217). Finally, Anthropologie lays out the ultimate moral vocation of the human species as a whole.

KU. Anthropologie is relevant to the KU in several respects. First, its psychological account of the nature of feeling provides valuable background for central arguments in the extensive “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” of the KU. Throughout Kant’s lectures in anthropology and empirical psychology, and again in his Anthropologie, the distinctive disinterestedness of aesthetic feeling prompts Kant to articulate a threefold division of faculties – cognition, feeling, and desire – rather than the more traditional twofold division into cognition and appetite. The KU is the Critical working out of this anthropological insight. There Kant shows the transcendental conditions of possibility of a feeling the psychological nature of which discusses in his Anthropologie. Second, Anthropologie offers a brief account of the distinction between the beautiful and sublime (7:241), as well as detailed psychological treatments of the free play of imagination; the “tendency” of taste to “promote morality externally” (7:244); and specific accounts of taste in fashion, rhetoric, and poetry. These discussions both enrich the treatments in the KU and depend on it for Critical defense. Third, the KU includes a substantial “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” in which Kant defends the legitimacy of teleological judging in reflecting on organisms in nature. The teleological accounts in Anthropologie, especially with regard to human beings as ultimate and final end of nature, flesh out similar discussions in the KU (5:429-36, 7:321-33). Anthropologie also adds specific details about the character and vocation of human beings as members of particular groups and as individuals to their species-level vocation. More importantly, the legitimacy of teleological judging, established in the KU, provides the Critical background that justifies the teleological accounts of human nature which are common in Anthropologie (e.g. 7: 166, 175, 190, 261, 274, 304-5, 324). Unlike mechanical physics, which gets Critical underpinnings from the KrV and related MAN, Anthropologie is an empirical investigation of human beings that utilizes teleological explanation, and thus it requires a critique of judgment for transcendental support.

In contemporary discussions of Kant, his Anthropologie has received treatment in at least five different contexts. Historical work on Kant’s life and works has increased dramatically in recent years, and in that context Anthropologie has begun to receive detailed historical discussion, a trend furthered by the publication of Kant’s lectures on anthropology in volume 25 of the Akademie Ausgabe (cf. Brandt 1999, 2003, and Brandt and Stark 1997). Contemporary neokantian moral theorists have turned to selected portions of Anthropologie to flesh out Kant’s otherwise abstract morals (cf. Grenberg 1999, 2001, Korsgaard 1996, Louden 2000, O’Neill 1989, Sherman 1997, Wilson 1997). Other recent work has seen in Anthropologie a historically important and philosophically compelling approach to the human sciences, one that both played an important role in the history of anthropology in German and provides a valuable alternative to thoroughgoing naturalism (cf. Brandt 2003: 90; Cohen 2005, Jacobs 2003: 107; Leary 1982; Sturm unpublished, Zammito 2005). Still others have turned to Anthropologie to shed light either on central themes in Kant’s Critical work (Cf. Guyer 2003 and Williams 1995 re: aesthetics, Caygill 2003 re: sensibility, Frierson 2003 re: freedom, and Wood 1999, Munzel 1999, Louden 2000, and Frierson 2003 re: ethical theory) or on minor issues for which Kant has important insights (cf. Frierson 2005 and Brender 1997 re: politeness, Jacobs 2003 and Frierson 2006 re: character, and Shell 2003 re: pleasure). Finally, Kant’s anthropological writings and related lectures have been studied for insights into Kant’s views about race and gender (cf. references above). From all of these studies of his Anthropologie, a fuller picture of Kant is beginning to emerge, one in which the rigor of the great philosopher of pure reason is balanced by the sensitive eye of “einer der großen Beobachter im Jahrhundert des ‘Spectator;” (Brandt 1999:8, cf. 2:207).

Bibligraphische Angaben

Erich Adickes, Kant als Naturforscher. Berlin: 1924-1925.

Annette Barkhaus, “Kant’s Konstruktion des Begriffs der Rasse und seine Hierarchisierung der Rassen,” Biologisches Zentralblatt, 113 (1994): 197-203.

Reinhard Brandt, „Beobachtungen zur Anthropologie bei Kant (und Hegel),“ in Psychologie und Anthropologie oder Philosophie des Geistes, hrsg. Burkhard Tuschling und Franz Hespe, Stuttgart: 1991, pp. 75-106.

Reinhard Brandt, “Augewählte Probleme der Kantischen Anthropologie,” in Der ganze Mensch: Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert, hrsg. Hans-Jurgen Schings, J.B. Metzler: 1994, pp. 14-32.

Reinhard Brandt, “Europa in der Reflexion der Aufklärung” in Politisches Denken, Jahrbuch 1997, pp. 1-23.

Reinhard Brandt, Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht : (1798), Meiner: 1999.

Reinhard Brandt und Werner Stark, “Einleitung” to Ak 25, 1997.

Natalie Brender, Precarious Positions: Aspects of Kantian Moral Agency, Doctoral Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1997.

Howard Caygill, “Kant’s Apology for Sensibility” in Jacobs and Kain 2003.

Alix Cohen, Kant’s Critique of the Human Sciences, Doctoral Dissertation (University of Cambridge), 2005.

Benno Erdmann, Reflexion Kants zur Anthropologie, Fues’s Verlag: 1882.

Emmanuel Eze, “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology,” in Anthropology and the German Enlightenment, Bucknell University Press: 1994.

Monika Firla, “Kants Thesen vom „Nationalcharakter“ der Afrikaner, seine Quellen und der nicht vorhandene ‘Zeitgeist’”, in Mitteilungen des Instituts für Wissenschaft und Kunst 52 (1997), 7-17.

Patrick Frierson, Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press: 2003.

Patrick Frierson, „The Moral Importance of Politeness in Kant’s Anthropology,“ Kantian Review 9 (2005): 105-27.

Patrick Frierson, „Character and Evil in Kant’s Moral Anthropology,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2006.

Jeanine M. Grenberg, “Anthropology from a Metaphysical Point of View,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 92-116.

Jeanine M. Grenberg, “Feeling, Desire, and Interest in Kant’s Theory of Action,” Kant-Studien 92 (2001): 153-79.

Norbert Hinske, “Kants Idee der Anthropologie,” in Die Frage nach dem Menschen, hrsg. Heinrich Rombach, Karl Alber: 1966.

Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain, Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, Cambridge University Press: 2003.

Brian Jacobs, “Kantian Character and the Problem of a Science of Humanity,” in Jacobs and Kain 2003.

Ursula Pia Jauch, Immanuel Kant zur Geschlechterdifferenz, Passagen: 1989.

Pauline Kleingeld, Fortschritt und Vernuft, Könighausen und Neumann: 1995.

Pauline Kleingeld, “The Problematic Status of Gender-Neutral Language in the History of Philosophy: The Case of Kant,” Philosophical Forum 25 (1993).

Pauline Kleingeld, “Kant and Georg Forster on ´Race` and Cosmopolitanism,” Tenth International Kant Congress, Sao Paulo, 2005.

“Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology,” in William R. Woodward and Mitchell G. Ash, hrsg., The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth Century Thought, Praeger: 1982, pp. 17-42.

Robert Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics, Oxford: 2000.

Joachim Moebus, „Bemerkungen zu Kants Anthropologie und physischer Geography,“ in Kritische Psychologie: Bericht über den 1. Internationalen Kongreß kritische Psychologie vom 13.-15. Mai in Marburg, hrsg. Klaus Holzkamp und Karl-Heinz Brann, Köln:1977, vol. 2, pp. 365-80.

G. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical” Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment, University of Chicago Press: 1999.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, “Rezension von Kants Anthropologie” in Athenaeum, hrsg. August Wilhelm Schlegel und Friedrich Schlegel 2 (1799): 300-306, reprinted in Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, hrsg. Karl Vorlander, pp. 339-43.

Robin May Schott, hrsg., Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, Pennsylvania State University: 1997.

Tsenay Serequeberhan, „Eurocentrism in Philosophy: The Case of Immanuel Kant,“ Philosophical Forum 27 (1996): 333-56.

Susan Shell, “Kant’s ‚True Economy of Human Nature: Rousseau, Count Verri, and Human Happiness,” in Jacobs and Kain 2003.

Werner Stark, Nachforschungen zu Briefen und Handschriften Immanuel Kants, Berlin: 1993.

Werner Stark, „Kant’s Anthropologie Lectures,“ Presented at the North American Kant Society, December 1997.

Thomas Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaft des Menschen, unpublished manuscript.

Alex Sutter, „Kant und die ‚Wilden’: Zum impliziten Rassismus in der Kantischen Geschichtsphilosophie,“ Prima Philosophie 2 (1989): 241-65.

Frederick Van der Pitte, Kant as Philosophical Anthropologist, Martinus Nijhoff: 1971.

Holly Wilson, “Kant’s Integration of Morality and Anthropology,” Kant-Studien 88 (1997): 87-104.

Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge University Press: 1999.

John Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology, University of Chicago Press: 2002.

Literatur

Reinhard Brandt, Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht : (1798), Meiner: 1999.

Patrick Frierson, Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press: 2003.

Norbert Hinske, “Kants Idee der Anthropologie,” in Die Frage nach dem Menschen, hrsg. Heinrich Rombach, Karl Alber: 1966.

Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain, Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, Cambridge University Press: 2003.

John Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology, University of Chicago Press: 2002.