Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
One of the last books Kant edited himself asks about the human being not from the lecture hall of metaphysics but from the observation of life: it distils one of his most popular lecture courses into knowledge of human nature for use in the world.
Source: Wikipedia: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
Genesis & context
More than two decades of lecturing — and, at the end, a book.
From 1772 to 1796 Kant taught anthropology at the Albertina in Königsberg, year after year — a course famous for drawing large audiences. In 1798 he turned those lecture notes into a book: the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, one of the last major works Kant edited himself (the Conflict of the Faculties appeared in the same year), prepared in 1796–97 from his lecture material, when age and failing health already weighed on his work. A second edition followed in 1800.
The programme behind the title: anthropology, for Kant, is not the physiology of a natural creature but the study of what human beings, as free agents, make — and can and should make — of themselves. In the Groundwork Kant calls the empirical counterpart of a pure metaphysics of morals “practical anthropology”; the 1798 Anthropology, which he himself calls “pragmatic”, is often read as the nearest he came to supplying it: ethics tested against how people actually think, feel and behave in the world.
Source: Wikipedia: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (background)
Structure & key ideas
Worldly wisdom in aphorisms — from attention and memory to national character.
- The guiding question
- “What is the human being?” is the fourth of Kant's great questions of philosophy (Logic, Ak. 9:25; letter to Stäudlin, 1793), to which, he says, the first three relate. The book itself does not pose it; its own guiding distinction (Preface, Ak. 7:119) is what the human being makes of himself as a freely acting being.
- Mind and its powers
- Long sections examine cognition, feeling and desire in everyday operation: attention, imagination, memory, wit and their weaknesses — with the reassurance that “a mind of slow apprehension is therefore not necessarily a weak mind” and that “ignorance is not stupidity.”
- Prudence and self-command
- Practical maxims run through the book, such as the advice that postponing pleasure enriches: thrift with the “cash of your life-feeling” makes you richer in the end.
- Character of groups
- Kant also characterises the sexes, nationalities and races of his day — the most dated and most contested layer of the book (see below).
What holds these observations together is Kant's picture of the human being as a creature in which morality and nature meet: the Anthropology is where his ethics touches the ground. The study of actual human beings is the empirical knowledge the categorical imperative needs if it is to guide real people in real situations (Kant's Groundwork calls this counterpart “practical anthropology”), with their slow minds, their appetites and their talent for postponing what they know they ought to do.
Source: Wikipedia: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (contents)
Two ways of knowing the human being
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Preface · Ak. 7:119
Kant's German original
Die physiologische Menschenkenntnis geht auf die Erforschung dessen, was die Natur aus dem Menschen macht, die pragmatische auf das, was er als freihandelndes Wesen aus sich selber macht, oder machen kann und soll.
The exercise uses our own close translation, which keeps Kant's sentence structure.
Which parts can you leave out without the sentence falling apart? Tap them and they step back. Then check your choice.
Physiological knowledge of the human being aims at investigating what nature makes of the human being; pragmatic knowledge at what he as a freely acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself.
Plain words: our paraphrase, not a Kant quotation
You can study human beings in two ways: as natural beings, that is, what body and nature make of them, or as agents, that is, what they make of themselves and could and should make. Kant's anthropology takes the second path.
The slider unlocks once you have checked your choice.
The frame: Physiological knowledge of the human being aims at investigating what nature makes of the human being; pragmatic knowledge at what he makes of himself.
Stepping back does not mean unimportant. Both additions carry the point: the human being acts freely, and “can and should” adds that it is also about what he can and ought to become, not only what he is today.
Key words
Once you have checked your choice, the underlined words can be opened.
Tap an underlined word in the sentence.
physiological (physiologisch)
- In Kant
- The natural science of the human being: what body, nerves and brain do with him. Whoever merely broods over this is, says Kant, a “mere spectator” (Ak. 7:119, our translation).
- In everyday speech
- Physiology is familiar from medicine and sport: how does the body work?
- Easy to confuse
- That is not entirely wrong. But Kant deliberately sets this view aside here: brooding theoretically about brain nerves is, for his purpose, “pure loss” (Ak. 7:119, our translation).
pragmatic (pragmatisch)
- In Kant
- Concerned with what the human being, as an agent, makes of himself and how he uses his knowledge in the world.
- In everyday speech
- “Pragmatic” today means practical, no debate about principles, as long as it works.
- Easy to confuse
- Not “as long as it works”. Kant means a knowledge of human beings for people who act and can shape themselves.
freely acting being (freihandelndes Wesen)
- In Kant
- A being that decides for itself what it does. Just before, Kant calls the human being “his own final end” (Ak. 7:119, our translation).
- In everyday speech
- Acting freely sounds like doing whatever you happen to want.
- Easy to confuse
- Not arbitrariness: the addition “can and should” shows that freedom here comes with a task.
Impact & the debate today
Bestseller, “lesser work”, rediscovery — and an honest look at its blind spots.
For a long time scholars dismissed the Anthropology as a lesser work of the ageing Kant, hardly worth serious analysis. The tide has turned: recent scholarship calls it increasingly important, some editors even recommend it as the best entry point into Kant for general readers, and Michel Foucault devoted his secondary thesis to it — his Introduction to Kant's Anthropology examines the book's place in the critical philosophy.
Honesty requires the other side too. The book's characterisations of women — who, Kant remarks in a note, want to “rule” while men (“especially before marriage”) want to be ruled — and its confident rankings of nations, with England and France cast as “the two most civilized nations on earth”, read today as documents of their era's prejudices rather than as insights. These passages on gender, nationality and race are real and should not be explained away; at the same time, they sit alongside the book's enduring core — the idea that human beings are not finished products of nature but beings who must make something of themselves. Reading the Anthropology critically means holding both truths at once.
Source: Wikipedia: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (reception, criticism)
NoteFour questions, one answer
… because the first three questions relate to the last one.
Reference: Logic (1800), introduction, Ak. 9:25 · Read the original
What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? What is the human being? At bottom, Kant writes, one could count all of this as anthropology. The four doors of this site follow that list.
Translation: Our own translation of the German original.
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