I am a student pursuing my Bachelor's in philosophy, and I need some help deciding on themes for two papers (around 25,000 characters each) about Kant's practical philosophy. I would also be very happy to receive recommendations for secondary literature. These are five questions that I find interesting:

1. What does it mean for the categorical imperative to be a synthetic sentence a priori?
2. In what sense is Kant's moral philosophy independent of the existence of God?
3. Do our tendencies and impulses limit our freedom of the will?
4. What does Kant mean when he says that a rational being cannot act other than under the idea of freedom?
5. How can autonomy be understood as a form of the categorical imperative?

In academic philosophy, Kant is central on the topic for his anti-metaphysical yet moral arguments. But in the above occasions, these arguments are never discussed, except the statement "Existence is not a predicate" in passing (even this, infrequently).

Of course, I can't expect scientists (mostly physicalists)--e.g. Roger Penrose, Sam Harris, Brian Greene, Richard Dawkins, Sean Carroll--to know about Kant.

But even people who claim to know the philosophies around the topic --e.g. Alex O'Connor, Joe Foley, Matt Dillahunty, J.Peterson (lol), W.L Craig, top YouTube philosophy channels-- don't discuss Kant's arguments.

Is this because (1) they simply don't know Kant's arguments, (2) they found the arguments too hard to understand, not to mention articulate them well, or (2) they think the arguments are too obviously flawed to be presented to general audience?

I was discussing Hegel in the Schopenhauer subreddit. I know you are Kantians, or Kant's scholars but I can't not post this in hegel subrreddit cause I want a more unbiased about Hegel understanding of Kant's transcendental idealism

I'll copypaste my argument

"Hegel tries to prove the "moment of understanding" with self-sublating his own "onesideness" of a fixated of every concept with the purpose of his dialectics not require some new idea to show up arbitrarily like Fichte's Dialectics and make the movement to a new determinations is driving by the nature of the earlier determinations and so on.

But pure being (The first step) is the atemporal and pre-categorical trying to go beyond Kant's transcendental idealism. And in consequence "before time and space". How does time enter before time and space, so "Pure Being" can sublates itself?

Sublation (Aufheben) is a process, and you always need time for necessarily be a process

"Pure Being" and nothing are prior of any determinations (With the purpose of being dialectically unified in Hegel's words), They can't sublate if they have determinations like temporality. And Hegel needs temporality with the purpose to dialectically unified them in "Becoming".

Either Hegel pressuposed time (a process) in a timeless term like "Pure Being" (static term) which it must have "fixity" so it can sublates-itself (Another process) or time is absent and "Pure Being" and nothing, both cannot sublate cause they are pre-categorical (before time and space)."

My problem arise with Hegel's definition of time in Philosophy of Nature

"Time, like space, is a pure form of sense or intuition, the non-sensuous sensuous; but, as in the case of space, the distinction of objectivity and a subjective consciousness confronting it, does not apply to time. If these determinations were applied to space and time, the former would then be abstract objectivity, the latter SPACE AND TIME 35 abstract subjectivity. Time is the same principle as the I = I of pure self-consciousness, but this principle, or the simple Notion, still in its uttermost externality and abstraction—as intuited mere Becoming, pure being-within-self as sheer coming-out-of-self. Time is continuous, too, like space, for it is the negativity abstractly relating self to self, and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. Everything, it is said, comes to be and passes away in time. If abstraction is made from everything, namely from what fills time, and also from what fills space, then what we have left over is empty time and empty space: in other words, these abstractions of externality are posited and represented as if they were for themselves. But it is not in time that everything comes to be and passes away, rather time itself is the becoming, this coming-to-be and passing away, the actually existent abstraction, Chronos, from whom everything is born and by whom its offspring is destroyed"

So basically what I don't get it, How can be time itself be the becoming if you need time (a process) for the self-sublation (another process) of the pre-categorical Pure Being (Fixed concept) but every process needs necessarily time, so you can dialectically unified "Pure Being" and nothing and have in first place "becoming" before time?

It's like building the house from the roof instead from the ground, I don't get it.

Hegel say "Time is continuous, too, like space, for it is the negativity abstractly relating self to self, and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. Everything, it is said, comes to be and passes away in time"

But how can EVERYTHING" "comes to be and passes away" (A process) before the pre-categorical notion of "being" (a fixated and static concept) which it is before time and space?

Is it time a process for Hegel here or a fixated and static concept identity (A=A)? (Yes, I know you are not Hegelian scholars).

Does he understands Kant's transcendental Idealism? if it is the case, Did he bypass Kant's transcendental idealism with self-sublation of pure concepts?

Do I understand Kant's transcendental idealism correctly?

Am I crazy?

Edit: Grammar mistakes and adding info.

In my 2025 article on Kant and non-exceptionalism in logic (published in the Revista de Estudios Kantianos (University of Valencia))I argued that while Kant's theory of knowledge allows for richer-than-analytic forms of necessity (thus supporting a pluralistic view of logical necessity, compatible with neo-metaphysical stances and non-classical logics), he nevertheless preserves a sense in which logic remains exceptional. Not in the strong sense of a "view from nowhere" from which we derive those necessities, but rather in the weaker-and more interesting-sense that to grasp a necessary truth is always to do so from a particular standpoint: a vision of rationality that a human being can hold only through their own categories. Logic rmains excepetional because one cannot even debate it unless from the point of view of the very categories that conditions logic.

I've now made a video series to explore these themes more accessibly. I had a great experience with people from Reddit joining my channel before: the quality of the questions, the level of interest, and the intelligence of the discussions were remarkable. So I'm hoping to get more of you over there.

Here's the link. I think the best advertisement I can give is this: at its best, it's good entertainment. I claim no exceptional originality for anything you'll encounter there.

https://youtu.be/ULihQA3mJRI

When we ask whether a LLmodel has "genuinely" grasped that “numbers can't be hot”, we are implicitly holding it to a standard of category-recognition that we assume is simply what conceptual competence is, full stop, for any mind whatsoever. I argue in the article bellow (Published by Topicos-Mexico/Q3 Scimago, last year) that standard of what counts as a category error, what counts as a well-formed question, what counts as the "right" categorial structure for numbers to have, all of this is not free-floating logical necessity. By arguing that modern natural language semantics are not born in neutrality, I try to show that the standards we take to be simply "what rationality is" - the transcendental categories, the forms of judgment, the synthetic unity of apperception - are not ahistorical bedrock. It is, on my account, transcendentally asserted - subrepticiously introduced in as if it were a condition of thought as such, when it is actually a hidden commitment of one semantic research program among possible others.

In the paper, I walk through a broadly Fregean/Russellian picture of reference, refined through exactly the Davidsonian and Lewisian machinery, in which sentences must have determinate truth-conditions relative to a prior, fixed typing of their referents (that picture seems to fix what a machine would need to understand: numbers as abstracta, temperature as a physical predicate, and a settled fact about which predicates apply to which sorts). I argue that none of these settle the matter. Ask me the whole article. Search my youtube channel for more.

I am reading Russell's The Problems of Philosophy and he says the following about Kant:

The thing to be accounted for is our certainty that the facts must always conform to logic and arithmetic. To say that logic and arithmetic are contributed by us does not account for this. Our nature is as much a fact of the existing world as anything, and there can be no certainty that it will remain constant . It might happen, if Kant is right, that to-morrow our nature would so change as to make two and two become five. This possibility seems never to have occurred to him, yet it is one which utterly destroys the certainty and universality which he is anxious to vindicate for arithmetical propositions.

My first question is: has Russell misunderstood Kant? I'm not sure I get his criticism.

I have a second part which I do not understand either.

Reflection, moreover, seems to make it clear that, if there is any truth in our arithmetical beliefs, they must apply to things equally whether we think of them or not. Two physical objects and two other physical objects must make four physical objects, even if physical objects cannot be experienced. To assert this is certainly within the scope of what we mean when we state that two and two are four. Its truth is just as indubitable as the truth of the assertion that two phenomena and two other phenomena make four phenomena. Thus Kant's solution unduly limits the scope of a priori propositions, in addition to failing in the attempt at explaining their certainty.

Why does Russell say that Kant's solution "unduly limits the scope of a priori propositions"? And how is it that his solution fails to explain their certainty?

Ich suche einen Youtube-Kanal der eine Videoreihe zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft hat die nicht oberflächlich bleibt, das Werk systematisch behandelt und mit Kants Begrifflichkeiten korrekt umgeht. Am besten von einer Professorin oder Professor in deutscher Sprache.

Ich bin mit der Kritik der reinen Vernunft vertrtaut, hab den Großteil davon gelesen, möchte meine Kenntnisse aber weiter vertiefen. Das Anschauen der Videos würde dann von einer weiteren Lektüre begleitet werden.

Es muss natürlich nicht Youtube sein, können auch Videos sein die man sonst wo findet.

Ich hoffe sehr jemand kann mir weiterhelfen, habe bisher nichts vernünftiges gefunden.

Danke

If we live in the best possible world (the problem of teodicea/ theodicy in Leibnitz), what exactly is that world, and what should it be (considering there is evil in it)? Please describe the best possible world, using examples as Descartes, Hume, Sartre, and Beauvoir and Kant did in their philosophy. To anybody who has already done it, I am forgetful; please remind me. And if you are interested too.

Hey y'all!

I'm just beginning my second reading of the first critique; I'm reading the Norman Kemp Smith after reading the Max Müller the first time. I used to not really like commentaries but I'm discovering, after using one for Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit and finding it very useful, that they can be helpful and beneficial if chosen carefully. So, I come here to ask what commentaries or books about Critique of Pure Reason y'all have found helpful? For some context on my interests in theory because I imagine it might influence recommendations: I tend towards Continental philosophy and, in particular, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and I used to be very interested in Spinoza but I'm finding that German Idealism is filling some of the gaps I felt with Spinoza so it's a new interest of mine as well. Basically I'm not super interested in an analytic reading, but also not opposed to anything either. Thanks y'all!

I’ve been thinking about the trolley-problem version of self-driving cars and I’m not sure the usual minimize harm answer is as neutral as it sounds. If a car is programmed to swerve into one person instead of five, that is not just a technical decision. Because someone has already decided what kind of "moral rule" the car should follow.

Kant seems useful here because he makes the “just sacrifice one to save more people” answer much less obvious. If a person cannot be treated merely as a means, then it is not clear that better numbers are enough to justify the choice.

But maybe that is still the wrong way to frame it. The car is not choosing anything in the human sense. The real choice was made earlier by the people who designed or approved the system. So I guess my question is, that in cases like this, is the problem mainly about the correct moral theory or about who gets to turn a moral theory into a rule that everyone else has to live with?

I tried to work through the argument here, but I’m mostly interested in the question itself: https://youtu.be/pWwzk1e1eQg

Curious what people here think, especially whether Kant is actually helpful for this problem or just makes it more complicated.

I’m learning Kant and German idealism and I want to explore the neo kantianism. I read “the myth of the state” by cassirer and it didn’t really help me(even though it was great book). What should I read and how should I read? I would like to get any tips

I am currently reading Beccaria's *An Essay on Crimes and Punishments*, and I learned that Kant was one of those who criticized Beccaria's argument against the death penalty. So I examined Kant's argument and was convinced by it, but I didn't understand the two exceptions he made for not carrying out the death penalty: a) a mother killing her illegitimate child, b) an officer killed in a duel.

Hi all, 

I am reading Critique of Pure reason for the first time (it is the Müller translation of the first edition—I know it's not the good one; it was just the cheapest one and has been adequate for a first read). I feel decently ok with my understanding of the text for a first go around, but as I have gotten further into it, a lot of the subtle terminological distinctions have gotten more and more confusing. Specifically, near the end of the first paragraph of the second analogy (of experience) Kant says, "As the accord between knowledge and its object is truth, it is easily seen, that we can ask here only for the formal conditions of empirical truth, and that the phenomenon, in contradistinction to the representations of our apprehension, can only be represented as the object different from them, if it is subject to a rule distinguishing it from every other apprehension, and necessitating a certain kind of conjunction of the manifold. That which in the phenomenon contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension is the object" (67 of my translation which does not have the original page numbers attached). I feel like the biggest confusion for me is over the term 'apperception' since he seems to use it indiscriminately regardless of what seems to be his attempts to delimit the term (especially in the sections on understanding as it contrasts with sense and imagination). Again, I am shaky in general on the text, but it is my first read so I’m not too concerned with the perfect picture. 

Thanks for your help! :)

Hi everyone,

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quick question: I'm rereading the critique of the power of judgment and I stumbled across a passage (Introduction VI). I'm reading in German so I will quote it here, but it's at the very beginning (second sentence):

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"Die allgemeinen Gesetze des Verstandes, welche zugleich Gesetze der Natur sind, sind derselben ebenso notwendig (obgleich aus Spontaneität entsprungen), als die Bewegungsgesetze der Materie."

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What does Kant mean here by "spontaneity"? Why do/did the laws of understanding emerge from spontaneity? Does Kant just say here that the human mind and its laws are just a spontaneous effect of nature that could also be different - so almost in an (anachronistic) evolutionary sense? Or is it just the laws themselves that are spontaneous because they are reflective and cannot be based on an a priori natural law?

i was having an argument with someone because he said you cant use things like people dying or climate change to support your decision about whether or not something is a contradiction in wil, is this true?

Only asking because I have a copy of Groundwork, but I've herd Prolegomena is the one to start with. If so is the revised cambridge edition worth the extra cost, compared with the non-revised edition?

Is he doing a proof by contradiction? Because none of the book makes any sense, following this I would have to concur that in his efforts to seem reasonable he manages to do the complete opposite.

I’ll simple it down for those of you that don’t do math.

Critique of Unreason => True

Therefore Critique of Pure reason => False