About

Ian N Proops is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His academic interests include Kant, the history of analytic philosophy, and early modern philosophy. The information provided indicates his focus on these areas, reflecting his expertise and research contributions within the field of philosophy.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Political Science
• Linguistics
• Law
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Literature
• Theology
• Art

Selected publications

• How Does a Tautology Say Nothing?

  History of analytic philosophy · 2024-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replies to Critics of <i>The Fiery Test of Critique</i>

  Kantian Review · 2024-04-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract I reply to criticisms of my book The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic from Béatrice Longuenesse and Patricia Kitcher on the paralogisms, Allen Wood on the third antinomy and freedom, Des Hogan on the resolution of the antinomies, and Anja Jauernig on the ontological argument.

  PublisherDOI

• Kant on Enlightenment

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-10-22

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Kant defines ‘enlightenment’ as ‘humankind’s emergence from its self-imposed immaturity’. This essay considers the meaning, role, and novelty of this definition, while also examining its relation to the Enlightenment slogans: ‘sapere aude’ (‘Dare to be wise!’) and ‘Think for yourself’. It is argued that there are two subtly different aspects to the ‘immaturity’ from which Kant, insofar as he endorses the transformative process of enlightenment, is urging us to ‘emerge’. These aspects correspond to his two images of immaturity: first, confinement within a kind of baby walker (Gängelwagen), and, second, attachment to ‘leading strings’ (Leitbande). It is argued that the first is a matter of thinking only ‘by courtesy’, the second a matter of thinking under the guidance of another—one’s guardian. It is asked whether Kant’s slogan ‘think for yourself’ might not be self-defeating, and whether his insistence that one think for oneself can be made consistent with his permitting belief formation on the basis of the testimony of another. Kant’s concept of enlightenment is situated with respect to his distinction between the public and private ‘uses of reason’, on the one hand, and his defence of ‘freedom of the pen’, on the other.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How to lie to God: Kant's Thomistic turn

  European Journal of Philosophy · 2024-05-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract For most of his career, Kant accepts Augustine's requirement that lying requires an intention to deceive. However, he eventually converts to Aquinas, following him in rejecting this requirement in favor of Aristotle's teleological conception of lying. This change of view amounts to an improvement, for it makes room for the possibility of lying to an omniscient being—and such lies, we argue, are indeed possible. We accompany these historical and philosophical theses with a biographical thesis taking the form of the following story. Kant believed that in his youth he had lied to God, largely because of his religious training. He adopted policies designed to help him resist the habit of lying to God. However, this program conflicted with his desire to lead a well‐rounded life as a public intellectual. This worldly ambition led him to forego the Quaker solution to the problem of lying to God: refuse to swear any oath to God, avoid set prayers and hymns, decline offers of intercession by clergy. Kant's worldly compromise served him well, but as he entered his twilight years, he came to worry that his only surviving argument for theism—the moral argument—might constitute a relapse into the vice of lying to God.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Destigmatizing the Exegetical Attribution of Lies: The Case of Kant

  Pacific philosophical quarterly · 2023 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology

  Abstract Charitable interpreters of David Hume set aside his sprinkles of piety. Better to read him as lying than as clumsily inconsistent. We argue that the attribution of lies can pay dividends in historical scholarship no matter how strongly the theorist condemns lying. Accordingly, we show that our approach works even with one of the strongest condemners of lying: Immanuel Kant. We argue that Kant lied in his scholarly work and even in the first Critique . And we defend the claim that this lie attribution, strange as it may sound, amounts to a kind of scholarly charity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Kant and the king: Lying promises, conventional implicature, and hypocrisy

  Ratio · 2023-08-21 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Immanuel Kant promised, ‘as Your Majesty's loyal subject’, to abstain from all public lectures about religion. All past commentators agree this phrase permitted Kant to return to the topic after the King died. But it is not part of the ‘at‐issue content’. Consequently, ‘as Your Majesty's loyal subject’ is no more an escape clause than the corresponding phrase in ‘I guarantee, as your devoted fan, that these guitar strings will not break’. Just as the guarantee stands regardless of whether the guarantor ceases to be your devoted fan, the compliance conditions of Kant's promise are not affected by Kant's ceasing to be the king's loyal subject. For good or ill, Kant made a lying promise to King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1794.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The First <i>Critique</i> on the Physico-Theological Argument

  2021-04-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines Kant’s criticisms of physico-theology as they are developed in the first Critique and in his pre-critcal work, The Only Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By ‘physico-theology’ Kant means the project of arguing from the (apparent) fact that the world contains end-directed or ‘purposive’ natural features and arrangements to the existence of God conceived of as an all-powerful, perfectly wise, and benevolent creator—an ‘Author of Nature’, who brings the world into existence through His wisdom and free choice. Kant’s attitude to this project is complex: while he rejects physico-theology in its traditional, crude form (the so-called ‘ordinary’ physico-theology), he nonetheless endorses a more sophisticated, ‘revised’ physico-theology. However, the argument he defends aims to produce, not knowledge, but only a justified ‘doctrinal belief’ in a wise and great (but not perfect) creator of matter ex nihilo: a creator-god with a small ‘g’.

  PublisherDOI

• List of Figures

  2021-04-22

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2021-04-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter presents the main themes of the book, including, most importantly, a re-interpretation of Kant’s guiding metaphor for critique, namely, the ‘fiery test’ of the title. The image to which Kant is appealing is not that of an ordeal (a trial by fire) but rather a metallurgical test in which ore samples are checked for their precious metal content. The upshot is that critique is not a pass–fail affair, but has variegated results; moreover, it is in part optimistic: the test, in addition to burning. off the dross, seeks to uncover nuggets of value in traditional speculative metaphysics. Other topics examined in the chapter include: dogmatism and scepticism, method and experiment as guiding metaphors; Kant’s idiosyncratic take on Pyrrhonism; his practice of this idiosyncratic Pyrrhonism; Kantian charity; denying knowledge in order to make room for faith; the nature of speculation; the pre-eminence of the Antinomies; and Kant’s methodological influences.

  PublisherDOI

• Empirical and Rational Psychology

  2021-04-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines the conceptions of rational and empirical psychology developed in the writings of Kant’s predecessors and in his own pre-critical writings. The views of the following figures are examined in detail: Wolff, Gottsched, Baumgarten, Meier, and the Kant of the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures. Once this background has been surveyed, the chapter goes on to explore: Kant’s conception of a distinctively pure rational psychology; his science of self-consciousness; and his two contrasting understandings of how rational psychology might be pursued. The chapter argues that Kant’s target in the Paralogisms chapter is an idealized ‘pure’ rational psychology, an aspiring a priori ‘science’ of the soul, whose closest antecedents in the tradition are the views of Baumgarten, on the one hand, and his own views in the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures, on the other.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Roy Sorensen

  6 shared

• Michael Kremer

  University of Chicago

  1 shared