Personality and Humanity in Kant - University of Lisbon
Oftentimes taken as a thinker of the individual, others as a thinker of theuniversal, Kant’s thought has been greatly reduced to these two dimensions and is seenas aiming at one or the other, but seldom at both as one.As such, Kant the cosmologist, the physical geographer, the aestheticist, theanthropologist, considers the individual in order to ultimately ascertain the universal,whereas Kant the critical philosopher, the logician, the metaphysician starts fromuniversal principles in order to explain the individual.The reality of Kant’s views on the human being, however, is quite different. As proof of this stands the very fertile emergence and consolidation of the concept ofperson throughout Kant’s work, and what its gradual construction comes to mean for Kant’s unique concept of the human being. A key-concept ever since Kant’s work as a cosmologist, a geographer, an anthropologist, visible in its pivotal position incosmogony or in the anthropological concept of a pragmatic I/We – the concept ofpersonality would also be at the core of Kant’s positions on practical philosophy,politics or history, only to play a no less relevant role in his critical philosophy. Kant’sconcept of person therefore escapes the limitations of individuality and/or universality,and brings such concepts, as well as their fields of thought, closer together. It suggests anew concept of human being that is as multifarious as the different fields of knowledgeupon which it is construed.The concept of person, in its relation to that of humanity, is therefore central in Kant’s work, and its fertile, multidimensional nature offers the possibility for a new reassessment of Kant’s positions on the human being from the different scopes of Ecology, Cosmology, Politics, Aesthetics or Philosophy. This, we think, bears very noble and positive interdisciplinary possibilities, and may enable us to re-think Kant’sconception of humanity and its implications in light of the most potent socio-politicaland societal challenges of our days.The organizing committee welcomes papers that explore the concepts of humanity and personality in Kant from any disciplinary perspective, while privileging those capable of showing the centrality of such concepts for a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the critical philosophy.