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This thesis reads radical indeterminacy into the reflective judgements of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement through points of connection between Kant's aesthetics and the philosophies and writing of Theodor Adorno and Maurice Blanchot. These re-situate the 'ends' of Kantian aesthetics in the historical situation of the 1960s and 1970s. In turn, this historicising of Kantian aesthetics reinterprets its original content. Such double reading - from Kant forwards, and back to Kant - is configured through what I call 'reversal': the indeterminacy of aesthetic reflection calls for a reverse 'reading' of itself which is not self-defeatingly determined by the aesthetic. Kant thus gives us the vocabulary for re-reading his aesthetics of reflection, and from this other indeterminacies of reflection, despite his attempt to organise and explain reflective relations through consistently with philosophical form through judgement. To read Kant outside his or any philosophy's economy, the task demanded by Adorno's theory and Blanchot's writing, asks for poetic readers and writers such as their near-contemporary, Paul Celan. They understand Celan's poetry as making legible how Kant's aesthetic might be thought reflectively, thus showing that the indeterminacy Kant attributes to reflection can be aesthetically experienced without being effaced by the philosophical judgement implying that indeterminacy. This turn back, the turn of verse, forms the hinge between Adorno's and Blanchot's dialectical and political thinking, allowing the common sense, the un-institutionalised 'we' Kant thinks ratifies aesthetic judgement, to remain negative or 'unavowable'. Aesthetics still structures the reading of poetry, but such poetry makes the indeterminate implications of Kantian aesthetics legible. 'Disconnection' becomes the organising principle for reflection and politics, implied by but now freed from aesthetic judgement, made visible by a poetry of 'reversal'. We conclude by finding the development of these ideas in two major elegists of Celan, Geoffrey Hill and Jeremy Prynne.

This thesis sets out to examine Kant's criticism of the cosmological argument. Kant's general philosophical views are expounded and his reasons for the rejection of metaphysics are explained. In the course of the argument Kant's own analysis of the cosmological proof is discussed. He laid great stress on the fact that there are two stages involved in the cosmological proof. His principal criticism concerns its second stage. There the proponent of the proof seeks to move from the necessary being, whose existence is said to have been established in the first stage of the argument, to God. Kant's claim that the second stage of the proof involves the principle of the ontological argument is discussed as is his criticism of the ontological argument itself. There are two principal forms of the cosmological argument. These are the argument from contingency and the first cause argument. Kant discusses both in the Critique of Pure Reason, the one in his critique of rational theology, the other in his chapter on the Antinomies. The thesis discusses the Kantian criticisms of both forms of the argument and considers how these criticisms may be answered. Kant's criticism of the second stage of the cosmological proof is also discussed and it is argued that his principle that this must be a pure a priori argument is unduly restrictive. Finally the possibility of founding a criticism of the cosmological argument on the central doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason is discussed.

Field of study This study represents an attempt to formulate a theoretical basis for musical experience in general and for music education in particular. The theory, derived from Kantian aesthetics, is that musical experience is mind-centred and rooted in imagination. First, an examination of the part imagination plays in perception, apprehension and creativity is presented; its particular role in musical experience is then analysed. Next, there is a critical review of appropriate methodology and this is followed by a detailed account of experimental work with young children. The experimental work includes: responses to electronic pieces; the invention of melodies and rhythms by children; the perception of consonance and dissonance; the fine discrimination of pitch and timbre. Methodology The overall research design entails a top-down analytical method beginning with the collation of verbal responses to electronic pieces and leading to the precise testing of children's fine discrimination of pitch and timbre. The methodology -part of which is probably novel- is derived from Personal Construct Theory (George Kelly) and also from Piaget's deductive 'clinical' approach. To this end, a variety of tasks ~ere given to a relatively small number of children (120) in groups of four. These tasks, both prescribed and open-ended, were well-defined. Results and conclusions The children in the sample -120 seven year-old boys and girls- demonstrated the ability to: 1. hold an aural image in the mind in order to compare it with another 2. form images to facilitate the representation of broad qualitative inter-sensory experience 3. make fine discriminations of pitch and timbre 4. employ mental constructs in melodic and rhythmic inventions The general conclusion from the study is that a mind-centred theory for music education is tenable, with the implication that pedagogy should be appropriately planned and focussed.

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This thesis sets out an argument in defence of moral objectivism. It takes Mackie as the critic of objectivism and it ends by proposing that the best defence of objectivism may be found in what I shall call Kantian intuitionism, which brings together elements of the intuitionism of Ross and a Kantian epistemology. The argument is fundamentally transcendental in form and it proceeds by first setting out what we intuitively believe, rejecting the sceptical attacks on those beliefs, and by then proposing a theory that can legitimize what we already do believe. Chapter One sets out our intuitive understanding of morality: (1) that morality is cognitive, moral beliefs can be true or false; (2) that morality is real, we do not construct it; (3) that morality is rational, we can learn about it by rational investigation; and (4) that morality places us under an absolute constraint. The chapter ends by clarifying the nature of that absolute demand and by arguing that the critical idea within morality is the idea of duty. In Chapter Two Mackie’s sceptical attack on objectivism is examined. Four key arguments are identified: (1) that moral beliefs are relative to bfferent agents; (2) that morality is based upon on non-rational causes; (3) that the idea of moral properties or entities is too queer to be sustainable; and (4) that moral objectivism involves queer epistemological commitments. Essentially all of these arguments are shown to be ambiguous; however it is proposed that Mackie has an underlying epistemological and metaphysical theory, scientific empiricism, which is (a) hostile to objectivism and (b) a theory that many find attractive for reasons that are independent of morality. Chapter Three explores the nature of moral rationality and whether scientific empiricism can use the idea of reflective equilibrium to offer a reasonable account of moral rationality. It concludes that, while reflective equilibrium is a useful account of moral rationality, it cannot be effectively reconciled with scientific empiricism. In order to function effectively as a rational process, reflective equilibrium must be rationally constrained by our moral judgements and our moral principles. Chapter Four begins the process of exploring some alternative epistemologies and argues that the only account that remains true to objectivism and the needs of reflective equilibrium is the account of intuitionism proposed by Ross. However this account can be developed further by drawing upon number of Kantian ideas and using them to supplement Ross ’ s intuitionism. So Chapter Five draws upon a number of Kant's ideas, most notably some key notions from the Critique of Judgement. These ideas are: (1) that we possess a rational will that is subject to the Moral law and determined by practical reason; (2) that we possess a faculty of judgement which enables us to become aware of moral properties and (3) that these two faculties together with the third faculty of thought can function to constitute the moral understanding. Using these ideas the thesis explores whether they can serve to explain how intuitions can be rational and how objectivism can be justified.

The Critique of Pure Reason inaugurated Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Commentators commonly distinguish between Kant’s Positive Project (PP), that is, his epistemology as laid out in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic, from his Negative Project (NP), expressed in terms of the destructive implications his epistemology has on speculative metaphysics and rational theology. Against this tradition I will argue that the whole of the Critique is largely a negative-destructive enterprise. I will focus on what is commonly taken as the centerpiece of the PP, that is, the Transcendental Deduction, and demonstrate that even here the NP is given normative priority. Though, to be sure, certain passages tend to encourage an interpretation of the PP as primary, I contend that this view is myopic and fails to pay sufficient attention to Kant’s global concerns in the Critique. I will demonstrate that a clear exposition of Kant’s metaphilosophical aims, commitments, and convictions is in fact corrosive to any such reading. The objective of this thesis, then, is two-fold: 1) to provide an account of Kant’s metaphilosophy in the Critique, and 2) to argue for what I will here and elsewhere refer to as the Primacy of the Negative Thesis, that is, that Kant prioritized boundary-setting over principle-generating.

This dissertation develops a Kantian philosophical framework for understanding our individual obligations under public law. Because we have a right to do anything that is not wrong, the best interpretation of Immanuel Kant's Universal Principle of Right tracks the two ways--material and formal--in which actions can be wrong. This interpretation yields surprising insights, most notably a novel formulation of Kant's standard for formal wrongdoing. Because the wrong-making property of a formally wrong action does not depend on whether or not the action in question has been prohibited by statute, Kant's legal philosophy is consistent with a natural law theory of public crime. Moreover, because the law can obligate us only by establishing a universal external incentive to obey its commands, statutes that impose only fines on nominal violators do not constrain our lawful options. Instead, if they are otherwise just, such statutes must be regarded as rightful permissive laws, according to which we may incur liabilities through our voluntary choices.

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