Kant's Empirical Psychology

Throughout his life, Kant was concerned with questions about empirical psychology. He aimed to develop an empirical account of human beings, and his lectures and writings on the topic are recognizable today as properly 'psychological' treatments of human thought and behavior. In this book Patrick R. Frierson uses close analysis of relevant texts, including unpublished lectures and notes, to study Kant's account. He shows in detail how Kant explains human action, choice, and thought in empirical terms, and how a better understanding of Kant's psychology can shed light on major concepts in his philosophy, including the moral law, moral responsibility, weakness of will, and cognitive error. Frierson also applies Kant's accounts of mental illness to contemporary philosophical issues. His book will interest students and scholars of Kant, the history of psychology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of action.

1. Introduction: the nature and possibility of empirical psychology; 2. Kant's empirical account of human action; 3. Kant's empirical account of human cognition; 4. Kant's empirical account of moral motivation: respect for the moral law; 5. Kant's empirical markers for moral responsibility; 6. Defects of cognition: prejudice and mental disorder; 7. Defects of volition: affects, passions, and weakness of will; 8. Conclusion; Appendix: charts and tables describing Kant's empirical psychology.

Patrick R. Frierson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitman College. He is the author of Freedom and Anthropology in Kant's Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 2003) and Kant's Questions: What Is the Human Being? (2013), and has published numerous articles in edited volumes and journals including Philosophers' Imprint and the Journal of the History of Philosophy.