kant
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Consequences without consequentialism (and striving for the impossible) – 10th week of Kant
Even if by some particular disfavour of fate, or by the scanty endowment of a stepmotherly nature, this will should entirely lack the capacity to carry through its purpose; if despite its greatest striving it should still accomplish nothing, and only the good will were to remain (not, of course, as a mere wish, but…
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Invisible freedom, and why we may need it that way – 9th week of Kant
I ask instead from what our cognition of the unconditionally practical starts, whether from freedom or from the practical law. It cannot start from freedom, for we can neither be immediately conscious of this, since the first concept of it is negative, nor can we conclude to it from experience, since experience lets us cognize…
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The (Kantian) wrong in lying to children – 8th week of Kant
A lie is a rejection and – so to speak – the destruction of man’s own dignity. A man who does not believe himself what he says to another one (even if it were a merely ideal person) has a lesser value than if he were simply a thing; since a thing is something real…
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Hope, and the need to be irrational – 7th week of Kant
Only in a practical relation, however, can taking something that is theoretically insufficient to be true be called believing. This practical aim is either that of skill or of morality, the former for arbitrary and contingent ends, the latter, however, for absolutely necessary ends. Once an end is proposed, then the conditions for attaining it…
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Possibility isn’t the default – 6th week of Kant
Possibility is only definable in terms of there not being a conflict between certain combined concepts; thus the concept of possibility is the product of a comparison. But in every comparison the things which are to be compared must be available for comparison, and where nothing at all is given there is no room for…
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Evolution, the transcendental, and bringing a person into the world – 5th week of Kant
“But now since there are pure as well as empirical intuitions (as the transcendental aesthetic proved), a distinction between pure and empirical thinking of objects could also well be found.In this case there would be a logic in which one did not abstract from all content of cognition; for that logic that contained merely the…
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On making a real choice and the Third Antinomy – 4th week of Kant
We have represented the glittering pretensions of reason to extend territory beyond all the bounds of experience only in dry formulas, which contain merely the ground of reason’s legal claim; and, as is fitting for a transcendental philosophy, we have divested these claims of everything empirical, even though the full splendor of reason’s assertions can…
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Taking animal suffering seriously – 3rd week of Kant
Lest he extinguish [the kindly and humane qualities in himself], [man] must already practise a similar kindliness towards animals; for a person who already displays such cruelty to animals is also no less hardened towards men. We can already know the human heart even in regard to animals. […] The more we devote ourselves to…
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How the world must be (or why two-standpoints may be a dud) – 2nd week of Kant
Now, if one takes the determinations of the existence of things in time for determinations of things in themselves (which is the most usual way of representing them), then the necessity in the causal relation can in no way be united with freedom; instead they are opposed to each other as contradictory. For, from the…
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Responsibility, despite all? – 1st week of Kant
[O]ne may take a voluntary action, e.g. a malicious lie, through which a person has brought about a certain confusion in society; and one may first investigate its moving causes, through which it arose, judging on that basis how the lie and its consequences could be imputed to the person. […] Now even if one…
Álvaro Rodríguez-González Barredo 