Volume 14, 2018
History of Philosophy
Samuel Kahn
Pages 87-99
A Kantian Responds to Santayana
In The German Mind: a philosophical diagnosis, Santayana launches an extended attack on Kant and, indeed, German philosophy in general. In this paper, I argue that whatever might be said about his attack on other German philosophers, Santayana’s attack on Kant, despite its subtlety, its force and its intelligence, is fundamentally misguided. To that end, I divide Santayana’s attack on Kant into four parts: an attack on transcendentalism generally and Kant’s theory of knowledge; an attack on the role of inclinations and moral worth in Kant’s ethics; an attack on Kant’s doctrine of the practical postulates; and a general attack on the Categorical Imperative. In what follows, I shall say something about each of these subjects in turn.