Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:26:14.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

General introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

Robert B. Louden
Affiliation:
University of Southern Maine
Allen W. Wood
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Robert R. Clewis
Affiliation:
Gwynedd-Mercy College, Pennsylvania
G. Felicitas Munzel
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

Immanuel Kant is best known to us as a systematic metaphysician who defended the a priori status of both the principle of morality and the fundamental principles of a science of nature. It may therefore come as a surprise to learn that as a university teacher, Kant's most frequently offered and most popular courses had to do with empirical materials to which he had difficulty giving any systematic form. These were lectures on what Kant called the two kinds of “world-cognitions” (Welterkenntnisse): physical geography and anthropology (VPG 9:157, ApH 7:122n, RM 2:443). Both deal with the environment in which human beings live and act, the former with the outer, natural environment, the latter with both the constitution of the human soul and the social and historical environment in which human beings, both individually and collectively, shape their own nature as rational creatures. Both of these empirical sciences were new in Kant's time, and he could even claim to share in their invention.

Kant began his academic career as a natural scientist, whose special interest in geology and earth sciences is clear from his early treatise Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755). In this work he proposed the earliest version of the nebular hypothesis of the origins of the solar system (though the hypothesis became well known only after its later and more mathematically sophisticated presentation by La Place). For most of the previous decade, Kant had been writing treatises on physics, astronomy, and geology, discussing such subjects as earthquakes and questions of meteorology. He began lecturing on physical geography in 1756, offering the same course on a more or less regular basis during the summer semester. His interest in anthropology, or at least one side of it, appears to have grown out of this, insofar as Kant sought to “display the inclinations of human beings as they grow out of the particular region in which they live” (Ak 2:9). It was for this reason that Wilhelm Dilthey argued that Kant's interest in anthropology should be fundamentally understood as arising out of his interest in physical anthropology – focusing, however, not on the natural environment as such but on human beings’ activities in it.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×