ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we examined Kant's “transcendental” anthropology, his examination of the cognitive, volitional, and affective dimensions of the human being from the standpoint of a priori, normative, autonomously given laws governing those faculties. But Kant also engaged in empirical debates about human beings. The next three chapters focus on different dimensions of Kant's empirical anthropology. In this chapter, I examine Kant's overall empirical anthropology of the human mind, that is, his empirical psychology. This psychology includes Kant's accounts of the different faculties of human beings, the causal laws that describe the activity of those faculties, and the bases of such faculties in “natural predispositions” found in humans' biological nature. In Chapter 3, I turn to two more specific aspects of Kant's empirical anthropology: his treatments of human evil and of the historical nature of the human species. In Chapter 4, I examine Kant's accounts of human diversity.
