Angela Breitenbach
I am a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy at Cambridge, and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
My research focuses on the history of modern philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Kant, as well as questions in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and aesthetics. I am particularly interested in Kantian approaches to the study of living nature, and am currently investigating the notion of beauty in the natural sciences.
I grew up in Germany before coming to Cambridge in 1999 to study for the BA in Philosophy and the MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science. I completed my doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a thesis on Kant’s philosophy of nature for which I was awarded a Humboldt Prize. In 2006 I returned to Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College. I spent my first three years as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia before taking up my position at Cambridge in 2012.
I have been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, which I shall hold from May 2013 to April 2015, to work on a Kantian approach to aesthetics in science. An abstract of the project is below.
Beauty in Science: A Kantian Approach to Aesthetics in the Study of Nature
How should we understand judgments about the beauty of scientific theories? What bearing do such judgments have on the truth of such theories? I propose to investigate whether we can give answers to these questions that provide an alternative to both traditional metaphysical accounts that link truth and beauty and prevailing contemporary conceptions that construe this link as purely contingent. Building on a Kantian conception of regulative principles, or heuristics, in science, I shall examine whether we may conceive of aesthetics as intrinsically tied to the aims of science by appreciating the inevitable conditions of the human perspective.
I am a Network Partner on the Leverhulme Trust International Network on ‘Kant and the Laws of Nature: Lessons from the physical and biological sciences of the 18th Century’. From November 2012 to October 2015 the network will bring together eight institutions in the UK, USA and Germany. For details, see the link below.
http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/news_item.cfm/newsid/34/newsid/149
Address: King's College
King's Parade
Cambridge CB2 1ST
My research focuses on the history of modern philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Kant, as well as questions in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and aesthetics. I am particularly interested in Kantian approaches to the study of living nature, and am currently investigating the notion of beauty in the natural sciences.
I grew up in Germany before coming to Cambridge in 1999 to study for the BA in Philosophy and the MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science. I completed my doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a thesis on Kant’s philosophy of nature for which I was awarded a Humboldt Prize. In 2006 I returned to Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College. I spent my first three years as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia before taking up my position at Cambridge in 2012.
I have been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, which I shall hold from May 2013 to April 2015, to work on a Kantian approach to aesthetics in science. An abstract of the project is below.
Beauty in Science: A Kantian Approach to Aesthetics in the Study of Nature
How should we understand judgments about the beauty of scientific theories? What bearing do such judgments have on the truth of such theories? I propose to investigate whether we can give answers to these questions that provide an alternative to both traditional metaphysical accounts that link truth and beauty and prevailing contemporary conceptions that construe this link as purely contingent. Building on a Kantian conception of regulative principles, or heuristics, in science, I shall examine whether we may conceive of aesthetics as intrinsically tied to the aims of science by appreciating the inevitable conditions of the human perspective.
I am a Network Partner on the Leverhulme Trust International Network on ‘Kant and the Laws of Nature: Lessons from the physical and biological sciences of the 18th Century’. From November 2012 to October 2015 the network will bring together eight institutions in the UK, USA and Germany. For details, see the link below.
http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/news_item.cfm/newsid/34/newsid/149
Address: King's College
King's Parade
Cambridge CB2 1ST
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Books by Angela Breitenbach
I argue against the widespread perception that Kant champions a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature while advocating a clear division between the rationality of humans and the causal determination of the natural world. Instead, I show that Kant's philosophy of nature embraces a teleological as well as a mechanistic perspective, both of which are necessary for a comprehensive conception of the natural world. Crucially, I argue that the teleological perspective is grounded in an analogy with the end-directed and unifying activity of reason. On my interpretation, our understanding of living organisms and, ultimately, of nature as a whole is based on an analogy with precisely that feature which is commonly thought to stand in thoroughgoing opposition to nature.
In the final three chapters of the book, I explore the consequences of my interpretation for contemporary debate. First, my analysis of the status of analogical reflection shows that Kant's analogically grounded teleological conception of nature is not only compatible with, but offers a necessary counterpart to, causal-mechanistic conceptions of nature. While the latter provides the reductionist perspective prevalent in the natural sciences today, the former supplements the latter in articulating a holistic understanding of the natural world. Second, the analogical conception of teleology I find in Kant offers an alternative to naturalised accounts of teleology prevalent in contemporary philosophy of biology today. More specifically, it offers a non-reductive, yet regulative, conception of teleological vocabulary in the biological sciences, showing that teleological reflection provides not only a heuristic tool for biological research but grounds our very understanding of nature as alive. Finally, I argue that the analogy between reason and nature has implications for our practical relationship with the natural world. I thus show how the analogical reflection that lies at the centre of Kant's natural philosophy sheds new light on a key debate in environmental ethics by grounding an analogical conception of the value of nature.
Papers by Angela Breitenbach
that would overcome some of these environmental problems. Kants argument for the right to property, put forward in his Doctrine of right, is complex. In Section 2, I attempt an interpretation. Section 3 works out the defining characteristics of the conception of property rights that Kants argument establishes and investigates their implications for determining property regimes in environmental resources. Kant proposes a minimalist notion of the right to property as a triadic relation between persons with regard to an object, justified only on the condition that it is universalizable in the given circumstances. I argue that this notion offers a
promising account for determining property relations with regard to environmental resources. By way of illustration, in Section 4, I focus on an example of Kantian property rights in one type of environmental resource: the marine fisheries.
I argue against the widespread perception that Kant champions a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature while advocating a clear division between the rationality of humans and the causal determination of the natural world. Instead, I show that Kant's philosophy of nature embraces a teleological as well as a mechanistic perspective, both of which are necessary for a comprehensive conception of the natural world. Crucially, I argue that the teleological perspective is grounded in an analogy with the end-directed and unifying activity of reason. On my interpretation, our understanding of living organisms and, ultimately, of nature as a whole is based on an analogy with precisely that feature which is commonly thought to stand in thoroughgoing opposition to nature.
In the final three chapters of the book, I explore the consequences of my interpretation for contemporary debate. First, my analysis of the status of analogical reflection shows that Kant's analogically grounded teleological conception of nature is not only compatible with, but offers a necessary counterpart to, causal-mechanistic conceptions of nature. While the latter provides the reductionist perspective prevalent in the natural sciences today, the former supplements the latter in articulating a holistic understanding of the natural world. Second, the analogical conception of teleology I find in Kant offers an alternative to naturalised accounts of teleology prevalent in contemporary philosophy of biology today. More specifically, it offers a non-reductive, yet regulative, conception of teleological vocabulary in the biological sciences, showing that teleological reflection provides not only a heuristic tool for biological research but grounds our very understanding of nature as alive. Finally, I argue that the analogy between reason and nature has implications for our practical relationship with the natural world. I thus show how the analogical reflection that lies at the centre of Kant's natural philosophy sheds new light on a key debate in environmental ethics by grounding an analogical conception of the value of nature.
that would overcome some of these environmental problems. Kants argument for the right to property, put forward in his Doctrine of right, is complex. In Section 2, I attempt an interpretation. Section 3 works out the defining characteristics of the conception of property rights that Kants argument establishes and investigates their implications for determining property regimes in environmental resources. Kant proposes a minimalist notion of the right to property as a triadic relation between persons with regard to an object, justified only on the condition that it is universalizable in the given circumstances. I argue that this notion offers a
promising account for determining property relations with regard to environmental resources. By way of illustration, in Section 4, I focus on an example of Kantian property rights in one type of environmental resource: the marine fisheries.