Chapter 1 - Kant’s lectures on anthropology: some orienting remarks

Summary

Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology are divided into two parts. After a short, programmatic introduction there follows first an empirical psychology modeled after the third part of Baumgarten's Metaphysica. For the initially untitled second part, there is no textbook precedent. To use a modern turn of phrase, the second part of the lecture could be described on the whole as 'differential psychology'. From the mid-1770s, variously executed but similarly intentioned presentations of this sort came to conclude and climax in an attempt to characterise the human species as a whole. This internal development, which is also reflected in novel terminology, includes Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The view of the human being associated with physical theology does, however, offer a striking contrast to the alternative 'determination of man' formulated from the beginning in the lectures on anthropology.