New article by Rafael Ziegler (HEC Montréal) entitled “Foresight as Consolation: Kant on the Capability of Future Making” published in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

Summary

There is renewed interest in future making across the social sciences. These discussions refer to Kant; however, his anthropology is not in the focus. The paper seeks to fill this gap and sketch the contours of Kantian foresight in his anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. It characterizes Kantian future making as consolatory foresight, a philosophical version of backcasting avant la lettre, which is critical of foresight as empirical anticipation only. The paper discusses this philosophical approach to foresight with a view to the capabilities approach, a major current in the contemporary social sciences and source of alternative views on development and progress.