Kant and the Faculty of Feeling is a landmark analysis of one of the most enigmatic and underexplored dimensions of Kant’s critical philosophy: the faculty of feeling. For centuries, scholars have explored Kant’s faculties of cognition and desire, often side-lining feeling as a residual category, dismissed as mere affectivity unworthy of systematic investigation. This volume seeks to rectify that imbalance, bringing together a diverse array of philosophical perspectives to illuminate the implications of feeling in Kant’s moral, aesthetic, and psychological frameworks.
In his transcendental architecture, Kant famously articulated the human mind as comprising three faculties: cognition, which apprehends and categorizes the world; desire, which orients us toward action; and feeling, which mediates our subjective experience of pleasure and pain. While the first two faculties have been rigorously examined in their epistemological and moral contexts, feeling has often been relegated to the shadows, its complexity overshadowed by the more structured realms of reason and volition. This collection interrogates why Kant deemed feeling a distinct faculty, asking pivotal questions about its necessity, nature, and systematic place within his broader philosophical project.
The editors and contributors tackle fundamental issues surrounding Kant’s conception of feeling, beginning with the question of its autonomy as a faculty. Why does Kant distinguish feeling as separate from cognition and desire, rather than subsuming it under their purview? What is the precise nature of feeling in Kantian terms, and how does it contribute to the unification of his theoretical and practical philosophy? The essays argue that feeling acts not merely as a passive receptacle of pleasure and pain but as an active, mediating force essential to the coherence of Kant’s system.
The book goes deeply into Kant’s aesthetic theory, exploring how feelings like the sublime and the beautiful exemplify the faculty’s role in reflective judgment. These feelings, far from being mere sensory delights, reveal a deeper purposiveness in human experience—an intuitive harmony between nature and the faculties of understanding and imagination. Similarly, contributors probe feelings central to Kant’s moral philosophy, such as respect for the moral law and the often-overlooked enthusiasm for moral ideals. These discussions illuminate the dynamics of feeling and reason, showing how feelings can ground and enhance moral motivation without succumbing to heteronomy.
A recurring theme in the collection is the ambivalence Kant exhibits toward feeling. On the one hand, he emphasizes its indispensability for human subjectivity, recognizing that feelings like respect and moral hope are essential to the enactment of ethical life. On the other hand, he warns against the dangers of pathological feelings—emotions driven by sensuous inclinations that can lead to moral corruption. This dual perspective challenges simplistic interpretations of Kant as a purely rationalist philosopher and invites a re-evaluation of the interplay between reason and affect in his thought.
Particular attention is given to lesser-studied feelings, such as enthusiasm, which Kant saw as a double-edged sword—capable of inspiring moral greatness but equally prone to excess and irrationality. Similarly, the essays explore hope as a rational feeling that bridges the practical and the theoretical, imbuing finite human reason with the confidence to pursue its ultimate ends. These analyses highlight the complexity of Kantian feelings, underscoring their importance not only for understanding Kant’s moral and aesthetic theories but also for appreciating his insights into the psychology of human agency.
The contributors also examine the relationship between feeling and the other faculties, arguing that feeling serves as a crucial point of mediation. By connecting the theoretical insights of cognition with the practical imperatives of desire, feeling prevents a schism between reason’s theoretical and practical employments. This mediating function, the essays argue, makes feeling indispensable to Kant’s critical system, especially as it is developed in the Critique of Judgment, where aesthetic and teleological judgments reveal the synthetic unity of human experience.
Kant and the Faculty of Feeling is not merely a collection of essays but a cohesive and rigorous inquiry that situates feeling at the heart of Kantian philosophy. It challenges readers to reconsider entrenched interpretations of Kant as a cold rationalist and to appreciate the warmth, depth, and subtlety of his treatment of human affectivity. In doing so, it invites further exploration of the faculty of feeling as a vital component of philosophical anthropology, ethics, and aesthetics.
For Kant scholars, this volume offers indispensable insights into an overlooked dimension of his thought. For historians of philosophy, it reveals new connections between Kant’s ideas and broader traditions in moral sense theory and Enlightenment psychology. And for contemporary philosophers, it opens new avenues for understanding the intersections of reason, emotion, and human flourishing. Kant and the Faculty of Feeling is a monumental contribution to Kantian scholarship, one that will shape discussions of his philosophy for decades to come.
Simon Gros 
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