College of Arts and Science

In this paper I connect the well known assertion from Kant’s ethical theory that we can never be fully certain about our motivations with his theory of the thing in itself of the self from the first _Critique_ in order to demonstrate that Kant has a theory of the unconscious. I situate this argument in a criticism of Wuerth’s recent interpretation in _Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics_ and suggest a revision of his notion of immediatism. I gather other information about Kant’s theory of the unconscious and show that, for Kant, the unconscious mind is a privileged site of moral personhood.

While climate change involves spatial, epistemological, social, and temporal remoteness, each type of distance can be bridged with strategies unique to it that can be borrowed from analogous moral problems. Temporal, or intergenerational, distance may actually be a motivational resource if we look at our natural feelings of hope for the future of the world, via Kant’s theory of political history, and for our children. Kant’s theory of hope also provides some basis for including future generations in a theory of justice.

This chapter appears in Pablo Muchnik ed., Rethinking Kant: Volume 1, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Cambridge, UK, 2008). In it I discuss Allison's "Incorporation Thesis," arguing that it could undermine the distinction between the categorical imperative and hypothetical imperatives.

Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” metaphor is not a good one for climate change, steering discourse and activism into theoretical and strategic dead-ends. Given that there are different kinds of environmental problems (selective changes, resource overuse, and pollution) the root problem of the tragedy of the commons metaphor is that it mistakes what is more properly a pollution problem for a resource overuse problem. In the case of climate change, using metaphors like “climate commons,” “atmospheric sink,” and “consumption” (of resources) lead us into (five) unhelpful ways of thinking, according to which this article is divided, namely: 1. The coupling climate change with a concern about “population,” 2. The distraction of focus by interweaving the topic with multiple other environmental problems, 3. The portraying of GHG pollution as a resource (the ability of the atmosphere to “sink” CO2) and blinding us to the need to develop new, non-polluting energy technologies, 4. The insistence on individual responsibility and personal changes, 5. The overlooking of the fact that the consequences of greenhouse gas pollutants, like CO2, are removed from the activities of creating them and their benefits. Clearer and more effective climate change communication links the heat-trapping gases to their main industrial causes and primary human effects.

This paper explains Kant’s theory of feeling, paying special regard to virtuous feelings. Feelings, for Kant, are physiological events that are caused by various workings of the cognitive faculty. Kant classes feelings as either intellectually or experientially wrought, but either can be virtuous or vicious. Just as we have many moral and rational thoughts, we have many moral and rational feelings—including anger and other “negative” emotions. Comparison is made with Nussbaum’s theory of “transitional anger,” which does not allow for anger itself to be virtuous. Far from having a disparaging view, Kant tends to associate virtue with feelings and vice with desires. Kant’s theory of feeling offers a fruitful alternative to contemporary Humean accounts of the relationship between morality and emotion, like Prinz’s or Churchland’s.