Kants Order of Reason: On Rational Agency and Control by Colin McLear ISBN 9780198895688, 0198895682, 97801919979 instant download

Kants Order of Reason: On Rational Agency and Control by Colin McLear ISBN 9780198895688, 0198895682, 97801919979 instant download

The aim of Kant’s Order of Reason is to give an account of Kant’s conception of rational agency that clarifies and explains both the scope and nature of such activity, and elucidates the centrality of Kant’s account of rational determination for his mature Critical philosophy. The core Kantian insight concerning rational determination is that the capacity for rationality is based in and derived from the capacity for exercising a specific kind of causality in the world—namely, free, or controlled, causality. The book consists of three parts. The first part provides a historically contextualized but nevertheless rigorous metaphysical framework for understanding Kant’s conception of mental activity, his theory of freedom, and its importance for understanding his conception of the difference between rational and non-rational forms of activity. It is then argued that Kant has a control-centered or “enkratic” account of rational activity and agency. According to this view, control is the central and essential aspect of all rational activity, and a rational being is one that can exercise her diverse powers, or use her diverse intellectual faculties, in a manner that is under her own control. Building on this structure, the second part shows how Kant applies his conception of controlled activity to the various forms of activity of which the rational mind is capable, in increasing order of complexity (i.e., attention, conception, judgment, inference, and comprehension). The third part puts this account to work with respect to long-standing disputes regarding self-consciousness, reason, evil, and alienation.