Kant on freedom, nature, and judgment: The territory of the third critique, By KristiSweet, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2023. pp. x + 222. $99.99 (hbk). ISBN : 9781316511121
Year: 2023
Type: book-review
Abstract: In her first book, Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History, Kristi Sweet works "to articulate … Kant's comprehensive vision of practical life" (Sweet, 2013, p. 7).She argues that Kant's account of reason's desire for the unconditioned underlies his conceptions of duty, virtue, the highest good, the moral world, politics, religion, culture, and history, and she concludes that these seemingly disparate elements of Kant's practical philosophy are 'organically related moments' of a coherent whole (Sweet, 2013, p. 11).Sweet's second book, Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the Third Critique, is also rooted in her attentiveness to the central role of reason's desire for the unconditioned in Kant's thinking.Whereas Kant on Practical Life focuses on reason's efforts to realize its desire for the unconditioned in the world, however, Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment emphasizes the problems and questions generated by reason's desire.On one hand, the finitude of human being not only entails the impossibility of a full or adequate realization of reason's infinite demand that the human being transform the world into a moral whole, but also reveals the necessity of hope in and for human life.And yet, hope can only be meaningful for human beings if we have reason to think our hopes can be realized.Accordingly, human reason's desire for the unconditioned ultimately raises the question: what may I hope?On the other hand, reason's desire for the unconditioned requires that reason seek to comprehend its own unity, coherence, and place in the world.This requirement finds its ultimate expression in reason's demand for systematicity in all things.But, reason's demand for systematicity must confront the fact that reason's self-critique uncovers a seemingly irreducible tension between the causally determined order of nature and pure practical reason's freedom.The latter fact raises the question: How can the realms nature and freedom and, by implication, Kant's critical philosophy constitute systematic wholes?Sweet's thesis in Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment is that Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPJ) self-consciously addresses both the question of hope and the question of systematicity in and through its account of reflective judgment.She argues that attending to Kant's double concern with hope and systematicity in CPJ reveals that and how the various parts of this work relate to one another.By illuminating the relation between its parts, Sweet aims to show that CPJ is "a unified text" (p.2).The core of Sweet's interpretation is her claim that Kant's account of reflective judgment reveals "a distinctive sphere of human life" that Kant names "the territory of judgment," which generates "a new vision of nature"-"a cosmic sense of nature" to which "the human being and mechanical nature both belong" (pp.2, 6).By demonstrating that reflective judgment always takes place "out in the territory" (Sweet employs this metaphor throughout the book) and points beyond itself toward a "cosmic sense of nature," Sweet aims to show that Kant's treatments of the
Source: European Journal of Philosophy
DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12886
Author: Samuel A. Stoner
Institution: Assumption University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4384659486