Kant's philosophy is often characterized as an attempt to provide the metaphysical foundation for Newtonian science. In such a characterization, the revolutionary metaphysical stance that Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason, based on a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, is seen as the result of his commitment to show the legitimacy of Newtonian science in a manner that still leaves space for morality and religious belief. His well-known dictum that he had “found it necessary to deny knowledge [of reality in itself], in order to make room for faith” (B xxx) bears witness to the legitimacy of this characterization of the Kantian project.

Such a description of the Critique leaves open, however, the question of Kant's more general beliefs about the philosophy of science. In this chapter, I shall show that Kant advocates a more empirically minded philosophy of science than could be anticipated from his views on Newtonian physics. In particular, I will show that Kant presents an account of the use of theoretical concepts in the development of scientific theories under the rubric of the “regulative use of reason” The understanding of science that Kant presents under this title has a great deal in common with the pragmatic understanding of scientific practice, in which the fallibility of particular scientific theories is stressed. Once the regulative use of reason is taken into account, it becomes clear that Kant views the scientific enterprise in a more empirical and less aprioristic manner than has been commonly thought.

Kant invented a new way of understanding morality and ourselves as moral agents. The originality and profundity of his moral philosophy have long been recognized. It was widely discussed during his own lifetime, and there has been an almost continuous stream of explanation and criticism of it ever since. Its importance has not diminished with time. The quality and variety of current defenses and developments of his basic outlook and the sophistication and range of criticism of it give it a central place in contemporary ethics. In the present essay I offer a general survey of the main features of Kant's moral philosophy. Many different interpretations of it have been given, and his published works show that his views changed in important ways. Nonetheless there is a distinctive Kantian position about morality, and most commentators are agreed on its main outlines.

THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY Germany

Kant's early philosophical career before the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in May 1781 was dominated by an unhappy love affair. “I have had the fate to be in love with metaphysics,” Kant wrote ruefully in 1766, “although I can hardly flatter myself to have received favors from her.” This preoccupation with metaphysics provided the leitmotif, and indeed the underlying drama, behind Kant's early intellectual development. We can divide his career into four phases according to whether he accepted or rejected the blandishments of his mistress. The first phase, from 1746 to 1759, is the period of infatuation. During these years Kant's chief aim was to provide a foundation for metaphysics. Accordingly, he developed a rationalist epistemology that could justify the possibility of knowledge of God, providence, immortality, and the first causes of nature. The second phase, from 1760 to 1766, is the period of disillusionment. Kant broke with his earlier rationalist epistemology and inclined toward skepticism, utterly rejecting the possibility of a metaphysics that transcends the limits of experience.

Kant's practical philosophy in its entirety comprises ethics and philosophy of right, moral theology, moral anthropology, and the philosophy of history, and combines them into one impressive theoretical structure. The theory of the self-legislation of pure practical reason developed in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788) stands at the center of this system. Through this theory Kant provides an entirely new theoretical foundation for justification in practical philosophy. In the previous history of practical philosophy foundations and first principles were sought in objective ideas, in a normative constitution of the cosmos, in the will of God, in the nature of man, or in prudence in the service of self-interest; but Kant was convinced that these starting-points were without exception inadequate for the foundation of unconditional practical laws, and that human reason could only concede absolute practical necessity and obligatoriness to norms that arose from its own legislation.

Among the pillars of Kant's philosophy, and of his transcendental idealism in particular, is the view of space and time as a priori intuitions and as forms of outer and inner intuition respectively. The first part of the systematic exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason is the Transcendental Aesthetic, whose task is to set forth this conception. It is then presupposed in the rest of the systematic work of the Critique in the Transcendental Logic.

The claim of the Aesthetic is that space and time are a priori intuitions. Knowledge is called a priori if it is “independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses” (B 2). Kant is not very precise about what this “independence” consists in. In the case of a priori judgments, it seems clear that being a priori implies that no particular facts verified by experience and observation are to be appealed to in their justification. Kant holds that necessity and universality are criteria of apriority in a judgment, and clearly this depends on the claim that appeal to facts of experience could not justify a judgment made as necessary and universal. Because Kant is quite consistent about what propositions he regards as a priori and about how he characterizes the notion, the absence of a more precise explanation has not led to its being regarded in commentary on Kant as one of his more problematic notions, even though a reader of today would be prepared at least to entertain the idea that the notion of a priori knowledge is either hopelessly unclear or vacuous.

THE CRITIQUE OF REASON

Whatever else a critique of reason attempts, it must surely criticize reason. Further, if it is not to point toward nihilism, a critique of reason cannot have only a negative or destructive outcome, but must vindicate at least some standards or principles as authorities on which thinking and doing may rely, and by which they may (in part) be judged. Critics of “the Enlightenment project” from Pascal to Horkheimer to contemporary communitarians and postmodernists, detect its Achilles' heel in arrant failure to vindicate the supposed standards of reason that are so confidently used to criticize, attack, and destroy other authorities, including church, state, and tradition. If the authority of reason is bogus, why should such reasoned criticism have any weight?

Suspicions about reason can be put innumerable ways. However, one battery of criticisms is particularly threatening, because it targets the very possibility of devising anything that could count as a vindication of reason. This line of attack is sometimes formulated as a trilemma. Any supposed vindication of the principles of reason would have to establish the authority of certain fundamental constraints on thinking or acting. However, this could only be done in one of three ways. A supposed vindication could appeal to the presumed principles of reason that it aims to vindicate - but would then be circular, so fail as vindication. Alternatively, it might be based on other starting points - but then the supposed principles of reason would lack reasoned vindication, so could not themselves bequeath unblemished pedigrees.

In the Transcendental Analytic Kant develops a characteristically striking - and at the same time characteristically elusive - conception of the causal relation. Thus, for example, in a preliminary section (13) to the transcendental deduction Kant introduces the problem by remarking that, with respect to the concept of cause, “it is a priori not clear why appearances should contain something of this kind” (A 90 / B 122); for, as far as sensibility is concerned, “everything could be situated in such disorder that, e.g., in the succession of appearances nothing offered itself that suggested a rule of synthesis - and thus would correspond to the concept of cause and effect - so that this concept would therefore be entirely empty, null, and without meaning” (A 90 / B 123). A memorable paragraph then follows:

THE ORIGINS OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH DYNASTY

The historical tradition preserved in the pages of Manetho's history allows three kings to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, Sabacon, Sebichos, and Tarcos, to be identified with Shabako, Shebitku, and Taharqa. These three are the middle monarchs of the five now generally included together to make the historical Twenty-fifth Dynasty of the monuments. Historians have expressed surprise that Manetho made no mention of Py (Piankhy), who established the fortunes of his line in Egypt, but his absence from the chronicler's list may be due more to a desire for chronological tidiness than to ignorance or malicious omission. For the greater part of his reign Py was absent from Egypt, and, as an earlier chapter of this history made clear, much of Egypt during this period was controlled by princes and chieftains, some of whom form, in Manetho's tradition, the lines of the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Dynasties. The overlap of dynastic lines presents problems to the annalistically-minded historian. To start the Twenty-fifth Dynasty with Shabako, who earned the royal title ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’ by extending Nubian rule over the whole land in about 713 B.C., was altogether neater.

Unfortunately, neatness is not customarily to be observed in the sequences of historical events. The narrative of a country's history is like a river which, from time to time along its course, is joined by tributaries. Each tributary represents a new stream which, to be fully understood, needs retracing back along its separate course.

Many topics have been lightly touched upon in the preceding chapters which merit special attention, and it is the purpose of this chapter to fulfil that need. A synthesis of our knowledge of a given aspect of Assyrian civilization is full of lacunae and surmise, and I advise the reader of this now, for I have spared him endless repetitions of such phrases as ‘It would seem that’ or ‘Possibly so’. These topics are usually treated for Assyria and Babylonia together in secondary works, and I have therefore stressed some of the major contrasts with Babylonian civilization.

THE MONARCHY

The idea of monarchy was born with the emergence of the Assyrian state and the two grew to maturity together like twins. The seed for these developments may be found in the ancient city state of Ashur and its ruler who was called a vice-regent (išši' akku) of the city god Ashur. When Shamshi-Adad I captured this city state, he sought acceptance by the indigenous population of himself as the legitimate ruler and at the same time, by conquering other city states in the region and assuming the imperialistic title šarru (‘king’), dramatically altered the previous course of Ashur's history and set for its people and their heirs highly ambitious goals. The idea of an Assyrian state under an absolute monarch was conceived at that moment but lay dormant until the time of Ashuruballit I (1363–1328 B.C.), who not only won Assyrian independence but laid the foundations of an Assyrian nation and an Assyrian monarchy.

SOURCES

The sources for this period are neither rich nor of a consistent value. Of contemporary literary sources we have first the evidence of the Homeric poems, then some very scanty passages in Hesiod, a few fragments of lyric poets such as Archilochus and Alcaeus, to which may be added some data, fragmentary and imprecise, in the logographers, especially Hecataeus. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides provide valuable, if limited, information. In later Greek and Latin literature can be found statements directly bearing on our period, for example in Aristotle or Strabo, or in the scholia of Homer or of Apollonius Rhodius. There are in addition indirect literary references; they are concerned with later events, but show a process of evolution from earlier times. To this first category of sources should be added the material evidence provided by archaeologists, which is, however, in itself not very rich.

A GEOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

After the migradons during the second half of the second millennium and the first centuries of the first millennium, the Thracians were settled in an extensive area stretching from the Euxine (Black) Sea to the neighbourhood of the Axius (Vardar), and from the Aegean Sea to the Transdanubian lands (below, Section IV). They straddled the Propontis (the Sea of Marmora), and had a foothold also in the Troad and in Bithynia.

HEZEKIAH'S LATER YEARS

Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalem in 701 B.C., and Judah remained an independent state, but the kingdom had been weakened, Sennacherib having laid waste, as he put it in monumental inscriptions on a bull colossus and a stone slab, ‘the wide district of Judah’. Pudu-ilu of Ammon, Kammusu-nadbi of Moab and Aiarammu of Edom had all escaped such devastation by paying tribute to Sennacherib without delay, and it seems likely that they now saw an opportunity to take advantage of the weakness of Judah. Levels II at Beersheba and VIII at Arad were destroyed at about this time, and though this might have been part of Sennacherib's operation, both cities lie rather far south of the area in which the Assyrians seem mainly to have conducted their campaign. It might well be that they mark an incursion of the Edomites, who indeed seem to have suffered an encroachment on the part of Judah earlier in Hezekiah's reign (I Chron. 4:41–3). That the Edomites were a threat in this area at about this time is suggested by a letter found in level VIII at Arad. This appears to have been sent by two officers, Gemariah and Nehemiah, in a military outpost to their superior Malkiah, presumably in Arad, and it states that the king should know that, thanks to trouble from the Edomites, they have been unable to send something (the text at that point is damaged). If the destruction of level VIII was the result of Edomite action this could have been a presage of the coming threat to the weakened state.

With the establishment of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom there starts a rich flow of documentary sources. The period of less than ninety years between the reign of Nabopolassar and the occupation of Mesopotamia by the Persians is documented by tens of thousands of texts concerning household and administrative economy and private law, over ten thousand of which have been published so far. Their content is varied: promissory notes, contracts for the sale, lease or gift of land, houses or other property, for the hiring of slaves and freemen, documents connected with international and internal trade, records of lawsuits, correspondence concerning official business, letters with family news, and so on. All these texts come from temple and private archives. We have no state archives of Neo-Babylonian times at our disposal apart from a few stray texts. The rich material in the Neo-Babylonian sources has unfortunately still been insufficiently investigated. It is therefore impossible as yet to give a complete description of Neo-Babylonian society.

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF NEO-BABYLONIAN SOCIETY

At the time when the Neo-Babylonian state came into being the inhabitants of some large Babylonian cities enjoyed special privileges. Only the fear of losing their civic privileges can explain why citizens of some cities (such as Nippur) remained faithful, in spite of great suffering and privation, to the Assyrian rulers under whom they had won these privileges, and fought the armies of Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom. As we have seen, the citizens of Babylonian cities were exempt from military conscription and corvée.