Kant''s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension

In Kants Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension, Rudolf A. Makkreel offers a new interpretation of Immanuel Kants theory of judgment that clarifies Kants well-known suggestion that a genuine philosophy is guided by a worldconcept (Weltbegriff). Makkreel shows that Kant increasingly expands the role of judgment from its logical and epistemic tasks to its reflective capacity to evaluate objects and contextualize them in worldly terms. And Makkreel shows that this final orientational power of judgment supplements the cognition of the understanding with the comprehension originally assigned to reason.

To comprehend, according to Kant, is to possess sufficient insight into situations so as to also achieve some purpose. This requires that reason be applied with the discernment that reflective judgment makes possible. Comprehension, practical as well as theoretical, can fill in Kants world concept and his sublime evocation of a Weltanschauung with a more down-to-earth worldview.

Scholars have recently stressed Kants impure ethics, his nonideal politics, and his pragmatism. Makkreel complements these efforts by using Kants ethical, sociopolitical, religious, and anthropological writings to provide a more encompassing account of the role of human beings in the world. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of Kant and the history of European philosophy. See more