Attempts have been made to naturalize Kant’s account of the rational will and good willing by way of Freud’s account of the superego. This paper argues that such efforts ignore the infantile legacy of the superego, although its origin story is nonetheless congenial to Kant’s larger moral project. Some more speculative points of contact between Freud and Kant are then explored.

A Kantian reconstruction of racialized moral psychology can illuminate the late Charles Mills’s account of white complicity. Unfortunately, philosophers have comparatively less to say about the incentive structure of the oppressed to participate in the systems that oppress them. Drawing on W. E. B. Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness, this article argues that the oppressed might participate in injustice out of a misguided sense of self-respect that rationalizes their disregard of the unmet claims of fellow oppressed people. Self-respect gone too far is, in effect, the normative basis of Du Bois’s critique of the black middle class’s failure to forge intragroup black political solidarity.

This essay investigates Kant’s various reasons for pessimism about happiness. I argue that some of Kant’s concerns about whether (or to what extent) happiness is possible for us are more pressing than others, and some can be more easily mitigated. Moreover, although he tends to emphasize the difficulties in securing personal happiness, Kant’s texts offer several helpful strategies for ways of acting and living that can help us avoid some key sources of discontent, thereby increasing our chances for being happy in life.

Kant’s Mathematical World (KMW) presents a new interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics and its connection to his account of the world of experience. It argues that Kant’s mathematics is grounded in a theory of magnitudes, which has its roots in the Greek mathematical tradition and differs deeply from our contemporary way of thinking about mathematics. KMW argues that in Kant’s view, intuition is required to represent magnitudes and that mathematics and the world of experience are far more intertwined than has been appreciated, with implications for interpreting both his philosophy of mathematics and his account of human experience.

Blake Roeber’s Political Humility is a wonderful piece of work; it’s clear and accessible enough that I’d expect a general educated audience with no philosophical background to profitably read all but the last two chapters (which get more into the epistemological weeds than the earlier parts of the book), while still offering sufficiently provocative arguments that I expect it to produce no small amount of controversy.1 Roeber argues that political polarization has created a discursive environment in which it’s extraordinarily difficult for people to know politically contested claims about the contemporary United States. In this review essay I’ll argue that he has not quite correctly identified just which beliefs his skeptical argument threatens, and that there are deep reasons why a crisp characterization of his target may be elusive. Nevertheless, I’ll argue that conceding on this point would not significantly change the lesson of his book, or weaken the force of his overall argument.

This critical notice assesses Matthieu Queloz’s The Ethics of Conceptualization, highlighting its compelling pragmatist account of concepts as tools shaped by human needs. It argues, however, that Queloz’s reasons for concept use do not constitute a fundamentally new kind of normative reason but instead recast familiar questions about normative authority at the conceptual level.

Climate change presents a paradox for moral judgment: its harms are immense and predictable, yet they arise from diffuse collective processes that seem to frustrate attributions of blame. Thus, many believe responsibility can only be coherently understood in forward-looking, structural terms. I argue, however, that a small but powerful group of actors, which I call the “Carbon Axis,” bears responsibility in a thick, backward-looking sense. The standard excuses (e.g., insignificance, ignorance, and lack of intent), which may exculpate some ordinary contributions to harm, afford this group scant moral cover. If anyone is culpable for the climate crisis, the Axis is.

John Broome and Duncan Foley argue that future generations should shoulder the full burden of climate mitigation. To achieve this, they propose that economists design a new institution they dub “the World Climate Bank.” Their argument appeals primarily to self-interest and to the idea of making a Pareto improvement that delivers “efficiency without sacrifice.” This article argues against their strategy on both ethical and pragmatic grounds. In general, “making the grandchildren pay” poses a serious threat to future generations and humanity’s progress. What is needed is a “Climate Justice World Bank” that respects principles of global and intergenerational ethics.

Loss & Damage involves the impacts of climate change that are beyond our ability to adapt. Losses and damages are those relevant impacts. That distinction is less commonly applied to adaptation and mitigation such that the impacts that are “adaptable” are beyond limits to mitigation. This article points out that these conceptual distinctions mean impacts should be indexed to (a) the time of evaluation (what is currently adaptable might not be in the future) and (b) the capacities of the society (abilities to adapt and mitigate are relative to capacities). Implications are drawn about responsibility based on these twin indices.

Moral deference strikes many as problematic. Some explain this problem by pointing to understanding: accepting a moral proposition on the basis of testimony is problematic because it’s in tension with understanding that proposition, and understanding moral propositions is especially important. In this paper, I argue that there is a set of non-moral propositions that it is also especially important to understand, for many of the same reasons that defenders of The Understanding Explanation give to defend the claim that understanding moral propositions is especially important. These propositions are featured in cases at the center of the debate about moral encroachment.

This article examines a tension between María Lugones’ critique of the universality of gender, and her view of the role of categorial thought in resisting what she calls the coloniality of gender. I argue that Lugones seeks alternatives to oppressive gender arrangements, advocating for a world where multiplicity replaces fragmentation and sexual differences exist without categories. However, the text challenges the necessity of abandoning categorial thinking altogether for transformative resistance, emphasizing instead the importance of solidarity, coalition-building, and alliances among people with diverse cosmologies in struggle against colonial and structural oppression.

The main claims of Kant’s Mathematical World are that for Kant mathematics is a science of magnitudes, the world of experience is a world of magnitudes, and there is an essential role for intuition in representing magnitudes. This paper critically examines the argument for these main claims. It articulates an eight-step “Master Argument” that connects magnitude to mathematics through a series of intermediary concepts. Some of these steps are left unclear in Kant’s Mathematical World, and I argue that the book’s silence on syntheticity and the role of intuition in proof is a partial cause for this unclarity.

Empirical evidence suggests that decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gases is impossible, thus requiring zero growth. What principles of distributive justice does a zero-growth economy call for? This article focuses on two distribuenda in a zero-growth economy. We argue that firm limits both on income inequalities and on individual emissions are required by justice. Concerning income, we argue that its distribution in a zero-growth economy should respect a suitably reinterpreted version of John Rawls’s difference principle. As to emission rights, contrary to the conventional wisdom that is insensitive to who reduces their emissions, we call for individual emission caps.

We can avoid severe environmental degradation only if we reduce our population numbers. While some believe that reduction in individual consumption could be sufficient to stop climate change, water shortages, habitat destruction, and other environmental problems, evidence shows that that is not a successful strategy. We can, however, accomplish population reduction and without destroying the economy or infringing on human rights.

I begin by introducing Sutherland’s account of why Kant takes mathematics to require a non-conceptual source of knowledge of bare numerical difference. Given that objective space and time are wholes, however, I wonder why, according to Sutherland, such a source of knowledge can’t be circumvented by taking each spatial or temporal position to have conceptualizable features sufficient for distinguishing them. I then point to an issue with Sutherland’s appeals to “construction” and argue that if Sutherland more sharply distinguished between the syntheses involved in mathematical construction and empirical apprehension, then he could avoid some problems that his reading faces.

Moral claim-rights possess three important relational features: direction, standing, and status. I set out an analysis of the structure of moral claim-rights that accounts for these three features. The compound relational account I defend comprises two theses. The independence thesis denies any entailment between the first two features of claim-rights—direction and standing are two conceptually independent normative relations. The integration thesis asserts that moral claim-rights consist in the substantive justificatory union of these two relations. The third feature of claim-rights inheres in the nature of this union.

Stephen Darwall argues that the conditions of the possibility of addressing demands second-personally entail a commitment to Kantian moral principles. He also argues that previous attempts to vindicate Kantian morality, as a necessary presupposition of agency, have failed. I defend both of Darwall’s arguments against recent objections. But my replies help to bring out a dilemma: either Darwall’s account collapses into previous versions of Kantianism, or it renders morality problematically contingent. I reject the first horn, and then argue that the contingency worry is either not as serious as it seems or affects other versions of Kantianism more severely.

Often, we’re unsure what morality requires, and there’s a debate about whether our moral uncertainty and moral beliefs matter to what we should do. I argue that (1) our moral-epistemic circumstances (our beliefs, credences, and evidence about morality) matter to what we morally ought to do; (2) many objections to this are only problems if we assume all moral norms are sensitive to moral-epistemic circumstances; and (3) we should avoid this with an account incorporating procedural norms that are sensitive to our moral-epistemic circumstances (analogous to legal due process norms) and substantive norms that aren’t (analogous to substantive justice norms).

This article reconsiders Kant’s theory of citizenship in the light of various Enlightenment debates on the duties and rights of women. First, the paper analyzes Kant’s view of women as passive citizens, confined to reproductive labour and domestic subordination, and highlights the class bias in his account. Second, it examines Theodor von Hippel’s defence of the intellectual and civic contributions of women, situating his proposals for legal and social reform in the wake of the influence of Kant’s practical philosophy. Third, it explores Amalia Holst’s attempt to reconcile the gendered duties of women with their access to higher education.

Carbon competence refers to individuals’ knowledge and understanding concerning the causes and impacts of greenhouse gas concentrations. Using a robust and expansive version of the concept, this essay poses the question of whether contemporary democratic theory demonstrates carbon competence. I argue that prevailing approaches reveal low carbon competence in two respects: implicit or explicit underestimation of the scope and severity of the ecological crisis, and commitment to normative strictures that actively discourage the possibility of rapid decarbonization. As exemplary models, I foreground the work of Nadia Urbinati, Cristina Lafont, and Hélène Landemore.