Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension by Rudolf A. MakkreelRiccardo PozzoRudolf A. Makkreel. Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021. Pp. 284. Hardback, $99.95. Paperback, $34.95.This is the last book Rudolf Makkreel published before passing away in October 2021. No wonder, then, that it makes some strong points, one of which is truly fundamental: the time has come to recognize the expediency of reading Kant along with Dilthey for a better understanding of the workings of human comprehension. Makkreel maintains that Kant endorsed “a more inclusive idea of philosophizing according to a world-concept (Weltbegriff ),” for Kant had realized that, because reason cannot simply extrapolate from the ways in which the understanding proceeds to a determinate lawful order, it is necessary to tame the speculative projections of reason by our own powers of orientation and judgment. Hence, Makreel concludes that “the overall worldview we can actually arrive at will need [End Page 511] to include supplementary modes of organizational order that are not determinant but reflective” (3).Throughout the book, Makkreel is pleading for Kant scholars to acknowledge the heuristic value of a set of concepts whose philosophical effectiveness has been to date underestimated. Readers will find many convincing analyses of the lexical cloud around judgment: determining judgment (bestimmende Urteilskraft) against reflecting judgment (reflektierende Urteilskraft) in its connection with the Weberian distinction between explaining (Erklären), understanding (Verstehen), and comprehending (Begreifen). What is at stake in contrasting the last two, understanding and comprehension, insists Makkreel, is the scope of what humans can claim to know, for while it is important to base knowledge claims on the empirical understanding, we must remain open to what could lie beyond the horizon of sense. Hence, critical philosophy is there to supplement “the limits of actual geographical” surveys of the earth with the “boundaries of all possible descriptions of the earth” (KrV A 759/B 787), whereby limits (Schranken) are negative empirical markers that do not take into account what could be beyond them, while boundaries (Grenzen) are positive markers that “presuppose a space existing outside a certain definite space and enclosing it” (Prolegomena, AA 4:352). Makkreel suggests we can infer that whereas earthly limits are imposed from without, worldly boundaries are in some sense self-imposed. Earthly limits would act as external negative restraints on the understanding, while worldly bounds work as internal positive constraints on reason as it attempts to comprehend both what we can and cannot know. Comprehension, argues Makkreel, can be “shown to be a mode of reason whose bounds must be judgmentally self-binding” (14).Let me take a step back. Makkreel intends to show that the task of understanding in its relation with comprehension is what we need to provide an overall characterization of Kant’s philosophical project. This is a bold stance, given Kant’s argument that the faculty of understanding (Verstand) proceeds discursively, namely one step at a time, which makes the project of a more holistic comprehension (Begreifen) highly problematic. However, Makkreel notes that if it is true that “concepts of reason serve for comprehension” (KrV A 311/B 367), it is also true they are purely inferential and at times sophistical (13). To help define what Kant ends up meaning by ‘comprehension,’ Makkreel provides exhaustive references to important discussions about this notion in Kant’s Lectures on Logic and the Critique of Judgment (40–46).Here comes to the foreground the notion of worldview (Weltanschauung) that stands alone in the title of his book. It is in the context of his discussion of the mathematical sublime that Kant broached the idea of an overall “worldview [Weltanschauung]” (KU AA 5:255), which nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers (e.g. Hegel, Dilthey, and Jaspers) took to denote a common or generic outlook on life. For Makkreel, though, ‘worldview’ designates a comprehensive way of characterizing Kant’s distinctive philosophical project (13).As I said above, this is a bold stance. While the first part of the book focuses on philosophizing according to a world-concept, the second part turns to our practical concerns as we act in the world. In...