Kant’s Concept of the Heart: A Developmental Account

Abstract This paper investigates the development of Kant’s concept of ‘heart’ ( Herz ). Though it has been largely overlooked, ‘heart’ is an important term for Kant, referring to the power of the faculty of desire to produce desires based on feelings. In his anthropology lectures, the heart belongs entirely to an agent’s Sinnesart (‘way of sensing’). In Religion , Kant reintroduces it to connect the Sinnesart and the intelligible Denkungsart (‘way of thinking’). Whether we freely choose a good or evil heart partly determines how our feelings cause desires, letting Kant say what his mature theory of freedom requires: that we are responsible for our own motivations.