The present collection of essays provides an analysis of the epistemological and practical themes that are connected to Kant’s treatment of anthropology. It elucidates both the sources of Kant’s analysis on the human being and the diverse philosophical and scientific aspects connected to it. The volume contains a brief introduction, nine essays and a useful index. The essays are divided into two parts. Part I is titled ‘Sources and Influences in Kant’s Definition of the Knowledge Concerning the Human Being’ (pp. 9–98) and is eminently historical in method, whereas the second part, ‘The Peculiarities of Anthropological Knowledge in Kant: Metaphysics, Morals, Psychology, Politics’ (pp. 99–162), is characterized by a more theoretical approach, which tends in particular to underline the presence of specific philosophical subjects in the whole of Kant’s anthropological enterprise (or the presence and presupposition of anthropology for a thoroughly well-informed treatment of many other disciplines in the context of Kant’s work). In this way, this volume represents a good mixture of historical scholarship and theoretical application, with some of the leading scholars of the discussion on Kant’s studies on anthropology here represented.
In their ‘Introduction’ (pp. 1–8), the editors Lorini and Louden underline the increased attention directed to Kant’s anthropology in the last two decades and situate the volume in the context of the numerous studies dedicated to this subject matter. A noteworthy programmatic statement on the part of the editors concerns the status of anthropology itself in Kant’s work, as they contend that ‘the essence of this discipline must be located in its capillary diffusion in Kant’s thought’ (p. 2) and, from this, infer that ‘it would … be risky today to treat Kant’s anthropology as a separate discipline’ (ibid.). This inference is intriguing but risky at the same time. On the one hand, by proposing to reconsider the traditional divisions in Kant’s thought, the editors try to solve several problems connected to the difficult classification and definition of the subject matter of Kant’s anthropology. However, on the other hand, by considering the nature of anthropology as being placed ‘nowhere and therefore everywhere … in Kant’s thought’ (p. 3), they create the impression of being deliberately willing to bypass what Kant himself strove to do, namely (as noted by the editors) to develop anthropology by virtue of introducing ‘this discipline in university classes’, where Kant treats it ‘as an academic discipline in its own right’ (p. 4). Readers might legitimately wonder whether Kant’s anthropology is intended to be an independent academic discipline in its own right or is it rather not to be considered as a separate discipline? The editors are not forthcoming with an answer, and no neat response can be found to this question in the collection. Instead, the volume, as a whole, shows how both of the mentioned alternatives for understanding the nature of Kant’s anthropology might be equally well-founded.
The first contribution, ‘Elucidations of the Sources of Kant’s Anthropology’ (pp. 11–28), is one of the best in the collection. In her essay, Holly L. Wilson provides us with a very informative and precise analysis of the history of the debate concerning the concepts of ‘human being’, ‘prudence’ and ‘knowledge of the world’ in Kant’s time, together with a consideration of the influences this discussion exercised on Kant’s thought itself. After analysing various positions in the recent (and not-so-recent) scholarship on the status and the nature of Kant’s anthropology (by Benno Erdmann, Emil Arnoldt, Wilhelm Dilthey, Erich Adickes and Reinhard Brandt), Wilson underlines that, ‘by 1775–1776, Kant has evolved out of the perspective that he is teaching empirical psychology, if that is what he was originally teaching, and it is now clear that he is teaching a Klugheitslehre (doctrine of prudence)’ (p. 15). After providing her thesis with substantial textual evidence, Wilson moves on to elucidate the possible direct and indirect influences on Kant’s anthropology as a doctrine of prudence thanks to authors like Christian Thomasius, Johann Franz Budde, Christian A. Heumann, Andreas Rüdiger and Christian August Crusius. She concludes her treatment of the sources by dealing with Alexander Baumgarten and then assessing a close similarity between the concept of ‘knowledge of the world’ and that of ‘doctrine of prudence’ – both defining Kant’s anthropological project from different angles. In fact, ‘Weltkenntnis is also knowledge of human being because one has to understand human beings in order to be able to motivate them to do what one intends. It turns out that the system of the anthropology has to do with its being a Klugheitslehre: prudence is directed at the world because it is practical and not speculative’ (p. 26). In this way, Wilson provides the readers with a most variegated picture of Kant’s sources, which do not simply concern topics in empirical psychology or physical geography.
In the second essay of the collection, ‘Anthropology – A Legacy from Wolff to Kant’ (pp. 29–42), Jean-François Goubet starts by focusing on Wolff’s rational psychology ‘in order to find themes and motifs re-appropriated by Kant in his own anthropology’ (p. 31): by doing so, the author does not illustrate the development of the theory of the faculties from Wolff to Kant but rather focuses on the ‘Wolffian metaphysical ideas that address rational psychology’ (ibid.) and their presence in Kant’s thought. The result is a study that, after dealing with pneumatological considerations, clearly shows important continuities and differences between Wolff’s and Kant’s assessments of the rational animal and the destiny of the human species.
In the third essay of the collection (‘Anthropology from a Logical Point of View: The Role of Inner Sense from Jungius to Kant’, pp. 43–61), Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero makes the important attempt to clarify the connection between anthropology and a rather controversial topic within Kant’s broader philosophical enterprise: that of inner sense. As the author notes, inner sense ‘does not pertain to one single discipline and is therefore key to Kant’s effort to demarcate the various disciplines that have to do with mental items or issues’ (p. 44). Favaretti Camposampiero explains that it is difficult to furnish a precise definition of the concept of inner sense because this faculty is ‘the centre of a conflict between competing demarcations and foundations of knowledge’ (ibid.). In order to make sense of Kant’s elaborations, the author considers his sources within Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, Lambert and Joachim Jungius. In this way, he shows that ‘Kant’s attack on the metaphysics of inner sense is basically an attack on the theory of immediate perceptions’ (p. 59).
In the fourth essay of the collection (‘The Rules for Knowing the Human Being: Baumgarten’s Presence in Kant’s Anthropology’, pp. 63–80), Gualtiero Lorini shows, first, the differences between Wolff and Baumgarten with regard to their treatment of the relationship between empirical and rational psychology. Second, he demonstrates how Baumgarten influenced Kant’s examinations of the concepts of metaphysics and anthropology in the 1770s. And, finally, he underlines the presence of Baumgarten’s thought in Kant’s anthropology. After dealing with the concept of inner sense, Lorini concludes with a consideration of the moral task of Kant’s anthropology.
In the fifth and last essay of the first section of the book (‘Kant on the Vocation and Formation of the Human Being’, pp. 81–98), Ansgar Lyssy deals with the concept of history and its relation to Kant’s anthropological project by focusing on the ‘Idea for a Universal History’ essay (1784) and the ‘Conjectural Beginnings of Human History’ (1786). After having referred to Johann Joachim Spalding’s concept of vocation, Lyssy underlines the peculiarities of Kant’s approach to history, which incorporates in particular ‘an understanding of our duties toward the whole of humanity’ (p. 85).
After these mostly historical considerations dedicated to Kant’s sources and influences, the second part of the volume analyses some implications that Kant’s anthropological reflections have for other disciplines. First, in ‘The Moral Dimension of Kant’s Anthropology’ (pp. 101–16), Louden firmly and intriguingly defends the thesis that Kant offers his readers a moral anthropology, which constitutes ‘an important and necessary subfield within pragmatic anthropology’ (p. 114). Louden clearly and rightly shows how this subdivision of anthropology is ‘one of the key ways in which we can put our empirical knowledge of human nature to use’ (ibid.). In the next essay (‘Ein Spiel der Sinnlichkeit, durch den Verstand geordnet: Kant’s Concept of Poetry and the Anthropological Revolution of Human Imagination’, pp. 117–32), Fernando M. F. Silva dedicates his attention to the connection between the faculties of sensibility and understanding by focusing on the concept of poetry and on the role played by human imagination in the context of Kant’s anthropology. In his contribution, Francesco Valerio Tommasi concentrates instead on the interconnections between anthropology, metaphysics and science, by analysing in a very precise way Kant’s debts to and abiding interest in somatology (‘Somatology: Notes on a Residual Science in Kant and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, pp. 133–46). As a result, the relation between anthropology and a philosophical science of the body are neatly underlined and Kant’s reflections on somatology, presented as ‘a discipline concerning a rational, pure, therefore philosophical consideration of the human body’ (p. 134), are interestingly presented in the context of a wider panorama, in which both German scholastic philosophers and philosophers from the Anglo-Saxon milieu are compared.
In the last essay of the collection (‘Controlling Mental Disorder: Kant’s Account of Mental Illness in the Anthropology Writings’, pp. 147–62), Nuria Sánchez Madrid sheds some light on a particular case of Kant’s anthropological reflections, namely, that of mental illness. In doing so, she takes an interesting and challenging perspective by showing how ‘Kant’s analysis of mental disorders is part of a more general task – viz., strengthening human theoretical and practical faculties through knowledge about the sources of their own flaws’ (p. 147). In this way, mental illness is taken to be of relevance from both a scientific and a social point of view, and she concludes that ‘Kant’s map of mental illnesses does not announce a fruitful dialogue with physicians, but it rather confirms that a popular audience might be largely benefited in Kant’s view if it receives a detailed diagnosis of the most common anomalies of conduct’ (p. 148). The anthropological aspect of the analysis of mental maladies is thus underlined by referring to the utility of this knowledge for human practical orientation in the world.
A defect of the volume is certainly the lack of a comprehensive bibliography which would facilitate the overview on the contemporary stand of the research. Still, I recommend that scholars interested in Kant’s anthropology read this collection, as it effectively presents the various interconnections between Kant’s discussion of anthropology and a number of other philosophical and scientific fields, both from a historico-philosophical and a theoretical perspective.
