Benjamin Vilhauer
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 459741 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Benjamin Vilhauer |
| NOMBRES | Benjamin |
| APELLIDO | Vilhauer |
| FIRMA | VILHAUER B |
| AFILIACIONES | The Graduate Center, CUNY |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5692-3945 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 10 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 9 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 10 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2009 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Five perspectives on holding wrongdoers responsible in Kant
The first part of this paper surveys five perspectives in Kant’s philosophy on the quantity of retribution to be inflicted on wrongdoers, ordered by two dimensions of difference – whether they are theoretical or practical perspectives, and the quantity of retribution they prescribe: (1) theoretical zero, the perspective of theoretical philosophy; (2) practical infinity, the perspective of God and conscience; (3) practical equality, the perspectiv…
Kant on Remorse, Conversion, and the Descent into the Hell of Self-Cognition
Kant’s conception of remorse has received little discussion in the literature. I argue that he thinks we ought to experience remorse for both retributivist and forward-looking reasons. This account casts helpful light on his ideas of conversion and the descent into the hell of self-cognition. But while he prescribes a heartbreakingly painful experience of remorse, he acknowledges that excess remorse can threaten rational agency through distractio…
Kantian Remorse with and without Self-Retribution
Kant’s account of the pain of remorse involves a hybrid justification based on self-retribution, but constrained by forward-looking principles which say we must channel remorse into improvement and moderate its pain to avoid damaging our rational agency. Kant’s corpus also offers material for a revisionist but textually grounded alternative account based on wrongdoers’ sympathy for the pain they cause. This account is based on the value of care, …
Kant’s Conception of Freedom
This extensive text (517 pages of full text, 554 overall) is an invaluable new contribution to Kant studies by one of the most important commentators of the last half century. Allison’s ambitious goal here is to give a developmental and systematic account of Kant’s thoughts on free will, spanning nearly the entirety of Kant’s writing life. Not all the texts Allison discusses here explicitly address free will, but his extensions of them to free wi…
‘Reason’s Sympathy’ and its Foundations in Productive Imagination
This paper argues that Kant endorses a distinction between rational and natural sympathy, and it presents an interpretation of rational sympathy as a power of voluntary a posteriori productive imagination. In rational sympathy we draw on the imagination’s voluntary powers (a) to subjectively unify the contents of intuition, in order to imaginatively put ourselves in others’ places, and (b) to associate imagined intuitional contents with the conce…
Sages, Sympathy, and Suffering in Kant’s Theory of Friendship
Kant’s theory of friendship is crucial in defending his ethics against the longstanding charge of emotional detachment. But his theory of friendship is vulnerable to this charge too: the Kantian sage can appear to reject sympathetic suffering when she cannot help a suffering friend. I argue that Kant is committed to the view that both sages and ordinary people must suffer in sympathy with friends even when they cannot help, because sympathy is ne…
Reason's sympathy” and others' ends in Kant
Kant's notion of (what I will call) rational sympathy solves a problem about how we can voluntarily fulfill our imperfect duty to adopt those ends of others which have value only because they have been set by rational agents, ends which I will refer to as merely permissible ends (MPEs). Others' MPEs are individuated in terms of their own concepts of their MPEs, and we can only adopt their MPEs in terms of their concepts, since to adopt them in te…
Free will and the Asymmetrical Justifiability of Holding Morally Responsible
This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praise…
Taking Free Will Skepticism Seriously
An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many—why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism (for example, skepticism about induction or other minds) are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, b…
The Scope of Responsibility in Kant's Theory of Free Will
Benjamin Vilhauer, William Paterson University of New Jersey Abstract In this paper, I discuss a problem for Kant's strategy of appealing to the agent qua noumenon to undermine the significance of determinism in his theory of free will. I then propose a solution. The problem is as follows: given determinism, how can some agent qua noumenon be 'the cause of the causality' of the appearances of that agent qua phenomenon without being the cause of t…
Taking Free Will Skepticism Seriously
An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many—why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism (for example, skepticism about induction or other minds) are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, b…
The Scope of Responsibility in Kant's Theory of Free Will
Benjamin Vilhauer, William Paterson University of New Jersey Abstract In this paper, I discuss a problem for Kant's strategy of appealing to the agent qua noumenon to undermine the significance of determinism in his theory of free will. I then propose a solution. The problem is as follows: given determinism, how can some agent qua noumenon be 'the cause of the causality' of the appearances of that agent qua phenomenon without being the cause of t…
Reason's sympathy” and others' ends in Kant
Kant's notion of (what I will call) rational sympathy solves a problem about how we can voluntarily fulfill our imperfect duty to adopt those ends of others which have value only because they have been set by rational agents, ends which I will refer to as merely permissible ends (MPEs). Others' MPEs are individuated in terms of their own concepts of their MPEs, and we can only adopt their MPEs in terms of their concepts, since to adopt them in te…
Free will and the Asymmetrical Justifiability of Holding Morally Responsible
This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praise…
The Scope of Responsibility in Kant's Theory of Free Will
Benjamin Vilhauer, William Paterson University of New Jersey Abstract In this paper, I discuss a problem for Kant's strategy of appealing to the agent qua noumenon to undermine the significance of determinism in his theory of free will. I then propose a solution. The problem is as follows: given determinism, how can some agent qua noumenon be 'the cause of the causality' of the appearances of that agent qua phenomenon without being the cause of t…
Taking Free Will Skepticism Seriously
An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many—why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism (for example, skepticism about induction or other minds) are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, b…
Free will and the Asymmetrical Justifiability of Holding Morally Responsible
This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praise…
‘Reason’s Sympathy’ and its Foundations in Productive Imagination
This paper argues that Kant endorses a distinction between rational and natural sympathy, and it presents an interpretation of rational sympathy as a power of voluntary a posteriori productive imagination. In rational sympathy we draw on the imagination’s voluntary powers (a) to subjectively unify the contents of intuition, in order to imaginatively put ourselves in others’ places, and (b) to associate imagined intuitional contents with the conce…
Sages, Sympathy, and Suffering in Kant’s Theory of Friendship
Kant’s theory of friendship is crucial in defending his ethics against the longstanding charge of emotional detachment. But his theory of friendship is vulnerable to this charge too: the Kantian sage can appear to reject sympathetic suffering when she cannot help a suffering friend. I argue that Kant is committed to the view that both sages and ordinary people must suffer in sympathy with friends even when they cannot help, because sympathy is ne…
Reason's sympathy” and others' ends in Kant
Kant's notion of (what I will call) rational sympathy solves a problem about how we can voluntarily fulfill our imperfect duty to adopt those ends of others which have value only because they have been set by rational agents, ends which I will refer to as merely permissible ends (MPEs). Others' MPEs are individuated in terms of their own concepts of their MPEs, and we can only adopt their MPEs in terms of their concepts, since to adopt them in te…
Kantian Remorse with and without Self-Retribution
Kant’s account of the pain of remorse involves a hybrid justification based on self-retribution, but constrained by forward-looking principles which say we must channel remorse into improvement and moderate its pain to avoid damaging our rational agency. Kant’s corpus also offers material for a revisionist but textually grounded alternative account based on wrongdoers’ sympathy for the pain they cause. This account is based on the value of care, …
Kant’s Conception of Freedom
This extensive text (517 pages of full text, 554 overall) is an invaluable new contribution to Kant studies by one of the most important commentators of the last half century. Allison’s ambitious goal here is to give a developmental and systematic account of Kant’s thoughts on free will, spanning nearly the entirety of Kant’s writing life. Not all the texts Allison discusses here explicitly address free will, but his extensions of them to free wi…
Five perspectives on holding wrongdoers responsible in Kant
The first part of this paper surveys five perspectives in Kant’s philosophy on the quantity of retribution to be inflicted on wrongdoers, ordered by two dimensions of difference – whether they are theoretical or practical perspectives, and the quantity of retribution they prescribe: (1) theoretical zero, the perspective of theoretical philosophy; (2) practical infinity, the perspective of God and conscience; (3) practical equality, the perspectiv…
Kant on Remorse, Conversion, and the Descent into the Hell of Self-Cognition
Kant’s conception of remorse has received little discussion in the literature. I argue that he thinks we ought to experience remorse for both retributivist and forward-looking reasons. This account casts helpful light on his ideas of conversion and the descent into the hell of self-cognition. But while he prescribes a heartbreakingly painful experience of remorse, he acknowledges that excess remorse can threaten rational agency through distractio…
Epistemology (10 obras) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (9 obras) · Philosophy (8 obras) · Free Will and Agency (6 obras) · Psychology (6 obras) · Social Psychology (5 obras) · War, Ethics, and Justification (5 obras) · Computer Science (4 obras) · Sympathy (4 obras) · Feeling (3 obras)