Metaphysical Emergence

Abstract

Reinhard Brandt and many others, that Kant’s anthropology is in fact ‘integrated’ into his critical philosophy (see 246, 15, 252–53), though she remains silent about the details of this integration. A systematic thinker who uses different disciplines to generate different kinds of knowledge is not necessarily a thinker who integrates pragmatic anthropology into critical philosophy. And Waldow’s own discussion of what she calls ‘Kant’s dual-aspect account of character’ (239) would appear to speak more in favor of segregation rather than integration. Despite Kant’s pronouncement in the Preface to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View that pragmatic anthropology deals with what humans as free-acting beings make of themselves, or can and should make of themselves, Waldow claims that ‘methodologically, Kant here [viz., in his Anthropology] remains descriptive,’ and that ‘this makes it difficult to see in which sense we are in fact dealing with humans as freely acting agents’ (245). Overall, Experience Embodied is a nuanced and perceptive account of several important but underappreciated aspects of early modern philosophy, and I particularly hope that other authors will further developWaldow’s emphasis on its moral dimension. Yet another virtue of the book is its extensive list of contemporary references. A great deal of excellent work has been done by younger early modern scholars in recent years, and it is nice to see these different efforts brought together in one accessible list. On the negative side, Waldow’s key points are sometimes made a bit too abstractly. But this is after all a philosophy book.