Why is God as well as justice called the truth? How does truth relate to deserts and the conatus, to beauty, generosity and grace toward others and toward all beings – be they persons, animals, plants, species, econiches, ecosystems, and the monuments of nature and culture?

When God tells Moses at the burning bush that His preferred name is I am that I am, does He encapsulate the ontological argument? Goodman considers, in the light of the reasoning of Philo, Avicenna, Anselm, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Gödel, and the critiques of Hume, Kant and others.

Kant states that empirical concepts, unlike pure concepts, are drawn from experience. Commentators are divided on whether this commits him to empiricism. I develop a rationalist reading that ascribes to Kant an epigenetic account of empirical concepts. To pave the way for this account, I first discuss Leibniz’s innatist alternative and then examine the parallel between Kant’s arguments about the origin of categories (pure concepts) and about biological formations. In both arguments, Kant defends a model of epigenesis that postulates an innate ‘preformation’ (in the form of ‘germs’ and predispositions) in the relevant cognitive faculty or organic species, while leaving room for external material conditions to play an indispensable role. The same model, I argue, can be extended to the formation of empirical concepts. I then connect this Kantian model with recent literature in cognitive science on the ‘epigenesis of mind’ and with the ongoing controversy over concept empiricism.

This chapter explains and defends Kierkegaard’s conception of neighbor love as a duty against Kant’s well-known claim that a duty to love is “absurd,” because we do not have volitional control of our emotions. For Kierkegaard, neighbor love is a “passion of the emotions” that requires humans to love all other humans. I distinguish short-term occurrent emotions from long-term, dispositional emotions, and neighbor love is the latter kind of emotion, which Kierkegaard calls a “higher immediacy” or “immediacy after reflection.” We do not have volitional control of the former, but the long-term dispositional character of the latter means that over time they can be fostered or inhibited. Emotions are understood using Robert Roberts’s view that emotions are “concern-based construals.” The ground of neighbor love is a recognition of the “inner glory” that all humans possess as creatures made in God’s image. Neighbor love is good because it recognizes the value that humans possess, but it is a duty because it is required by God, who has the standing to make such a demand on humans. God has this standing both because God has created humans from nothing but also because God is love and destines humans for a loving relation with him that “does not end at a grave.” God requires humans to love their neighbors both because it is good, and because God knows that human sinfulness requires that love be a duty. Although neighbor love is a duty, it is also a virtue, though one that requires divine assistance to acquire. It is a virtue not only because of its goodness, but because it contributes to human flourishing by securing three goods humans naturally desire: perseverance of our loves, autonomy, and meaning or significance. To the degree that neighbor love is actualized as a virtue, its status as a duty becomes less important, though it does not cease to be a duty for anyone short of eternity, unless that person is a perfected saint.

The focus of this chapter is Dharmakīrti’s defence of the Buddhist theory of concepts against the Hindu realists. By way of background, I begin by summarizing the original motivation and account of concepts as exclusions (apoha) as it was first adumbrated by the Buddhist epistemologist Dignāga and the criticisms raised against it by the realist Hindu philosophers Uddyotakara and Kumārila. In response to these objections, Dharmakīrti proposes a novel psychological-epistemological account of concept formation. With some help from Kant’s notion of schematism, I argue that Dharmakīrti’s account is successful in responding to the objections raised by the Hindu realists. I then argue that it is innovative in two respects: first, Dharmakīrti introduces the notion of functional similarities to draw attention away from real similarities; and second, his appeal to the notion of ekapratyavamarśa avoids the circularity problem faced by Dignāga’s account.

On a standard approach, love’s proper object is construed in terms of personhood or rational agency. Some philosophers in this broadly Kantian tradition deny that love has a proper aim: specifically, they reject the idea that love properly aims at the good of the beloved. They worry about paternalism and encroachment. In this chapter, we show how Kierkegaard’s Works of Love advances a rival approach: one which provides an account of how love can properly aim at the good of the beloved, without thereby becoming objectionably paternalistic or encroaching, together with an alternative conception of love’s object. We bring out the significant advantages of this approach, which emphasizes our human interdependence and mutual vulnerability. Through a comparison with the ethical thought of K. E. Løgstrup, whose philosophy of love we present as standing in significant continuity with Kierkegaard’s, we further show how the expressly theological framework advanced in Works of Love may also be developed in a more secular direction.

Idealized views of China were challenged by other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Montesquieu, who represented the aristocratic opposition to absolutism and saw China as an example of extreme despotism. These contrasting views on China in the early eighteenth century reflected conflicts between absolutist monarchs and the aristocracy. The idealized portrayal of China as a model for Europe, championed in Voltaire’s writings, gained ground with the rise of absolutist states. The debate about China and the dominance of the idealizing view among early Enlightenment thinkers eventually gave way to widespread disdain for China in the late Enlightenment, seen in the works of Diderot, Kant, Hegel, and others. This late eighteenth-century contempt for China was linked to Europe’s growing confidence stemming from renewed economic and geopolitical expansion, as well as the rise of the bourgeoisie as the new patrons of intellectual pursuits. Under the idea of Europe as a progressive continent, all ancient civilizations – including China and Christianity – were attacked as stagnant, superstitious, and obstacles to human reason and progress.

This collection addresses some of the injustices associated with modern European politics. It begins by addressing the evils of conquest, of Christian oppression and the crusades. Then follows a series of poems denouncing the human debasement and the immorality of slavery. Nationalism is decried. Some European defenders of peace and justice are cited, including Bartolomé de Las Casas, Fénelon, and Montesquieu. Their contribution to a more just history of humankind, described here as a natural history of humankind, is acknowledged. Prominent historical figures such as Vasco de Gama, Afonso de Albuquerque, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro are condemned for their acts of conquest. A model of perpetual peace based on universal fairness, humaneness, and active reason is put forward as an alternative to that offered by Kant. On this basis, several practical dispositions to peace are given. The damaging effects of a history based on illusions of progress are described, and, with James Burnett, Lord of Monboddo, as an example, a non-teleological history is promoted. The collection ends with an appeal to true Christianity, which is seen as dictating the good of all humanity.

Matthew Boyle relates Kant’s account of cognition to Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of substance. On Aristotle’s view, the form of a substance is the ground of its existence. To know this form is to know those of its properties without which it cannot exist. These characterize the substance as it is in itself. Such knowledge of form amounts to knowledge of a thing in itself, and the view that such knowledge is possible for us might be called formal realism. Kant thinks that this requires a type of mind human beings do not have: a non-discursive intellect. Boyle argues that Kant transposes Aristotle’s hylomorphic framework from a formal-realist to a formal-idealist register, and so “internalizes” the form-matter contrast. Instead of speaking of forms of being qua being Kant speaks of forms of objects insofar as they are knowable by a finite intellect. For Kant, just as for Aristotle, the form of a thing is its essence (and thereby the ground of its intelligibility). But for things whose form is ideal – appearances – knowledge of form cannot amount to knowledge of the ground of their existence. It can only amount to knowledge of the ground of their knowability.

“The Poet” is what Adorno calls a “carpet essay,” which weaves its announced topics of the poet and poetry into a host of other subjects: character and expression; reception and abandonment; beauty and love; the present, new, and near; the Neoplatonic One or “whole”; and a fundamental “flowing” or “metamorphosis.” Chapter 8 focuses on Emerson’s romantic and proto-existentialist pronouncement that “the man is only half himself, the other half is his expression”; his theory that language “is fossil poetry”; and the proto-pragmatic picture of language in his statement that “all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.” Other topics treated are the place of what Kant calls “unbounded” ideas in Emerson’s account of poetry, thinking as a mixture of reception and activity, and the connections and differences of “Experience” and “The Poet.”