This collection of essays is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to Kant's lectures on anthropology and their philosophical importance.

The only English translation of recently edited transcriptions of Kant's lectures on anthropology, given between 1772 and 1789.

Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are two broad approaches adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.

This 2007 volume contains all of Kant's major writings on human nature.

"In his critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Michel Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics. Instead, he explores the possibility of studying man empirically as he is affected by time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. If man is both the condition for knowledge and its ultimate object, any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language. Far from being a study of self-consciousness, anthropology is a way of questioning the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence." "Long unknown to Foucault readers, this text offers the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. Standing at a crossroad of his ouevre, it allows us to look back on Madness and Civilization while it sketches out the relationship between discourse and truth developed in The Order of Things. This "introduction" finally announces what will be considered the most scandalous aspect of Foucault's thought: the death of man, but also the joyous advent of the Ubermensch, the philosopher-artist capable of creating vital values."--BOOK JACKET.

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics. Drawing on a wide variety of both published and unpublished works spanning all periods of Kant's extensive writing career, Louden here focuses on Kant's under-appreciated empirical work on human nature, with particular attention to the connections between this body of work and his much-discussed ethical theory. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question, "What is the human being" is philosophy's most fundamental question, one that encompasses all others. Louden analyzes and evaluates Kant's own answer to his question, showing how it differs from other accounts of human nature. This collection of twelve essays is divided into three parts. In Part One (Human Virtues), Louden explores the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethical theory, showing how the conception of human nature behind Kant's virtue theory results in a virtue ethics that is decidedly different from more familiar Aristotelian virtue ethics programs. In Part Two (Ethics and Anthropology), he uncovers the dominant moral message in Kant's anthropological investigations, drawing new connections between Kant's work on human nature and his ethics. Finally, in Part Three (Extensions of Anthropology), Louden explores specific aspects of Kant's theory of human nature developed outside of his anthropology lectures, in his works on religion, geography, education ,and aesthetics, and shows how these writings substantially amplify his account of human beings. Kant's Human Being offers a detailed and multifaceted investigation of the question that Kant held to be the most important of all, and will be of interest not only to philosophers but also to all who are concerned with the study of human nature.

Although they were not written by Kant himself, the transcripts of his lectures constitute an important source for philosophical research today. Some of the contributions presented in this volume discuss the authenticity and significance of these transcripts, for example the status of Kant's lectures on logic and anthropology, while others shed light on the historical formation of specific writings, for instance the texts on the philosophy of religion. The contributions provide new insights into Kant's philosophy, that, if looking at Kant's published writings alone, we would not be able to gain. In a number of cases, a critical analysis of Kant's lectures gives us a better understanding of his published works. Thus his lectures on metaphysics shed new light on his Critique of Pure Reason, while the lecture on natural law is a valuable source for the understanding of his published legal writings.

This volume provides an extensive translation of the notes and fragments that survived Kant's death in 1804. These include marginalia, lecture notes, and sketches and drafts for his published works. They are important as an indispensable resource for understanding Kant's intellectual development and published works, casting fresh light on Kant's conception of his own philosophical methods and his relations to his predecessors, as well as on central doctrines of his work such as the theory of space, time and categories, the refutations of scepticism and metaphysical dogmatism, the theory of the value of freedom and the possibility of free will, the conception of God, the theory of beauty, and much more.

For almost forty years, German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant gave lectures on geography, more than almost any other subject. Kant believed that geography and anthropology together provided knowledge of the world, an empirical ground for his thought. Above all, he thought that knowledge of the world was indispensable to the development of an informed cosmopolitan citizenry that would be self-ruling. While these lectures have received very little attention compared to his work on other subjects, they are an indispensable source of material and insight for understanding his work, specifically his thinking and contributions to anthropology, race theory, space and time, history, the environment and the emergence of a mature public. This indispensable volume brings together world-renowned scholars of geography, philosophy and related disciplines to offer a broad discussion of the importance of Kant's work on this topic for contemporary philosophical and geographical work.

Kant divided his course of lectures on metaphysics into six parts: a section entitled 'prolegomena' followed by chapters on ontology, cosmology, empirical psychology, rational psychology, and natural theology. This volume's ten chapters, written by leading Kant scholars, constitute the most comprehensive and informed analysis of his metaphysics lectures to date. The book provides balanced coverage of the lecture transcripts from Kant's course by following his general structure, with at least one chapter devoted to major themes from each of its parts. As well as examining what the lecture transcripts can tell us about the content, context, and development of Kant's thought on a range of key topics - from his conception of transcendental philosophy to his critical theism - the contributors to this volume also offer expert discussion and insight on how to make responsible use of these key primary materials from the Kantian corpus.