The second part of morals: Kant's moral Anthropology and its relationship to his metaphysics of morals

Resumen

THE BIRTH OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In a letter to his former student Marcus Herz in late 1773, Kant writes:

This winter, for the second time, I am giving a lecture course on anthropology, which I now intend to make into a proper academic discipline.... The intention that I have is to disclose through it the sources of all the sciences, the science of morals, of skill, of social intercourse, of the method of educating and governing human beings, and thus of everything that pertains to the practical.... I include so many observations of ordinary life that my listeners have constant occasion to compare their ordinary experience with my remarks and thus, from beginning to end, find the lectures entertaining and never dry. In my spare time, I am working on a preparatory exercise for students out of this (in my opinion) very pleasant empirical study (Beobachtungslehre) of skill, prudence, and even wisdom that, along with physical geography and distinct from all other instruction, can be called knowledge of the world (10: 145-46)...