In this article, I confront Parfit’s Mixed Maxims Objection. I argue that recent attempts to respond to this objection fail, and I argue that their failure is compounded by the failure of recent attempts to show how the Formula of Universal Law can be used to demarcate the category of obligatory maxims. I then set out my own response to the objection, drawing on remarks from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals for inspiration and developing a novel account of how the Formula of Universal Law can be employed to determine the deontic status of action tokens, action types and maxims.

In this article I argue that the Critical Kant endorses the claim that God creates the best possible world, and that this claim is best understood as committing him to the view that God creates an infinitely valuable world. Kant’s understudied Critical theory of the best possible world differs significantly from his better-known quasi-Leibnizian pre-Critical account insofar as it uses an axiological rather than ontological metric for the goodness of worlds. The axiological metric introduces unique challenges for a Kantian account of the best possible world. These challenges are in turn resolved via an infinite value interpretation.

This essay explores the relation between worldly orientation and rational comprehension in Kant. Both require subjective grounds of differentiation that were eventually developed into a contextualizing principle for reflective judgement. This kind of judgement can proceed either inductively to find new universals or by analogy to symbolically link different objective spheres. I will argue that the basic orientational function of reflective judgement is to modally differentiate the formal horizonal contexts of field, territory, domain and habitat laid out in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgement. Assessing which context takes priority will be important in making aesthetic judgements and for applying practical reason to comprehend human affairs.

One of the more notorious passages in Kant occurs in the Doctrine of Right where he claims that ‘bloodguilt’ will cling to members of a dissolving society if they fail to execute the last murderer (MM, 6: 333). Although this is the most famous, bloodguilt appears in three other passages in Kant’s writings. These have received little attention in Kant scholarship. In this article, I examine these other passages and argue that bloodguilt functions as a symbol for the demandingness of justice. I then offer a sympathetic interpretation of the passage from the Doctrine of Right.

Stephen R. Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism revisits his earlier work on Kant and Swedenborg, arguing that, contrary to standard interpretations, the arguments of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer expand into ‘Critical mysticism’ throughout the Critical philosophy and into the Opus Postumum. Although the beginning portions of Palmquist’s book successfully disturb the standard portrait of Kant as the all-destroyer of metaphysics and religious experience, his argument for critical mysticism is inconclusive. It is impossible to know if his interpretation of the Opus Postumum is more right than its competitors. The conflict of interpretations shows Palmquist’s interpretation to be a hermeneutic impossible possibility.

This article critically examines some of the main arguments of Stephen Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism. While I agree with Palmquist that Kant admits the possibility of certain indirect forms of mystical experience, I argue that Palmquist makes Kant out to be more of a mystic than he actually was. In particular, I contend that Palmquist fails to provide convincing justification of two of his main claims: (1) that Kant was a mystic or at least had strong mystical tendencies and (2) that some of the experiences that are central to Kant’s philosophy are best understood as mystical experiences.

In his new book, Kant and Mysticism, Stephen Palmquist argues that Kant had already formulated his critical method by the mid-1760s and that it emerged from his reflections on Swedenborg’s mystical visions. In order to evaluate these claims, I consider Kant’s correspondence with Charlotte von Knobloch and Moses Mendelssohn before and after the publication of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer; the context in which Kant published Dreams; and the method he employs when he discusses Swedenborg’s visions in that work. I conclude that Kant’s critical method was not well-formed during the 1760s and did not emerge from Kant’s reflections on Swedenborg.

This contribution offers a sympathetic historical and intercultural reflection on Stephen Palmquist’s work Kant and Mysticism. It examines (1) the appropriateness of this portrayal of Kant and mysticism in relation to its historical context (which encompasses figures such as Malebranche, Spinoza and Swedenborg), suggesting that Kant is committed to an account of rationality, ethical personhood and a ‘critical ethos’ in tension with mysticism; and (2) the inadequacy of Kant’s understanding of mysticism in the context of South and East Asian philosophical and religious discourses, indicating the need for an intercultural turn in the philosophy of religion.

In this brief commentary, I focus on Part II of Kant and Mysticism, where Stephen Palmquist explores the space for mystical experience in Kant. In particular, I focus on (a) what Palmquist calls ‘immediate experience’ or ‘encounters’; (b) what he calls the ‘supervening’ of religious experience on ordinary experience; and (c) moral conscience as the ‘voice’ of God.

After summarizing the content of my book, Kant and Mysticism (Palmquist 2019), I warn against four preliminary misconceptions. The book never argues that Kant viewed himself as a mystic, fully acknowledges Kant’s negative view of mysticism, offers no comprehensive overview of mystical traditions, and aims to initiate a dialogue, not to have the final word. I then respond to the foregoing essays by the five critics.