Kant & Post-Kantian Philosophy Group Talk and Workshop (Karin Nisenbaum, Syracuse)

The Kant & Post-Kantian Philosophy Group is delighted to welcome as a speaker Karin Nisenbaum, an associate professor of philosophy and the Renée Crown Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University. Her research areas include Kant, German Idealism, and 19th & 20th-century Jewish thought. Her book For the Love of Metaphysics: Nihilism and the Conflict of Reason from Kant to Rosenzweig (Oxford University Press, 2018) focuses on the role of the principle of sufficient reason and the idea of a primacy of practical reason in the history of German Idealism. She is currently at work on two monographs: the first is on Kantian and post-Kantian conceptions of the highest good; the second defends a post-Kantian form of moral perfectionism. Additionally, Dr. Nisenbaum has focused her efforts on promoting diversity and inclusion in the discipline of philosophy by creating a support network for women working on Kant and post-Kantian philosophy.

In addition to her talk on Friday, December 6, Dr. Nisenbaum will be conducting a day-long workshop the following day, Saturday, December 7, in JHB 418. In the morning of the workshop (10 am – noon) Borris Hennig (TMU) will give a talk titled “Marx on Ownership,” and in the afternoon (3–5 pm), there will be a discussion of a pre-circulated paper by Karin Nisenbaum, titled “Getting at the Root of Evil: Kant and Fichte on the Murderer at the Door.” For more information and to receive the Nisenbaum paper, please contact Nick Stang.

Talk Title

Kant and Maimon on the Identity and Role of the Highest Good

Talk Abstract

In his essay, “Attempt at a New Presentation of the Principle of Morality and a New Deduction of its Reality” (1794), Salomon Maimon provides an interpretation of the identity and role of the highest good in Kant’s moral theory.  My aim in this paper is to make the case that Maimon’s interpretation compels us to reexamine widely accepted interpretations of Kant’s own highest good and its relationship to the moral law.  According to the standard interpretation, virtue or the good will is what Kant calls the supreme good, but only the complete good (virtue together with happiness) and not the supreme good is the highest good.  By contrast, I will defend the view that the highest good is both the supreme good (virtue or the good will) and the complete good (virtue together with happiness).  More specifically, I will argue that the supreme good is the highest good considered as the good maker of other goods, and the complete good is the highest good considered as the most desirable object.  Once we reassess Kant’s views on the highest good in the light of Maimon’s interpretation, we will also need to reconsider the widely accepted idea that Kant’s moral theory is one without a notion of value as its fundamental concept (the deontological reading of Kant’s moral theory).  I will argue that Kant’s critical revolution in practical philosophy does not consist in the subordination of all considerations of value to principles of right.  Rather, his criticism of pre-critical philosophers is that they mistake the nature of the unconditioned good.  Kant puts freedom in the place of eudaimonia.

The Kant & Post-Kantian Philosophy Group is a a subgroup of the History of Philosophy Research Group, which focuses on European philosophy in Kant and post-Kantian traditions.