2025 Vol. 44. №4

The Russian philosopher Victor D. Kudryavtsev-Platonov was introduced to Kant’s ideas through the works of his older contemporaries, one of whom was Wilhelm Traugott Krug, the author of the concept of transcendental synthetism. However, the degree and character of the influence of his philosophical ideas on Kudryavtsev-Platonov’s epistemology remain unexplored to this day. To fill this gap I have examine the main features of transcendental synthetism and the basic tenets of Krug’s theory of cognition as well as their specific relation to Kant’s transcendentalism. I then describe the character of Kudryavtsev-Platonov’s acquaintance with the works of Krug and compare the views of these two philosophers. I demonstrate that Krug’s theoretical philosophy is a mix of Kantian transcendentalism and common sense convictions. I establish that Kudryavtsev-Platonov became acquainted with Krug’s Fundamental Philosophy and The System of Theoretical Philosophy quite early on. He was an opponent of the philosophy of common sense although, like Krug, he derived the being of the real and ideal world from the fact of self-consciousness. Unlike Krug, Kudryavtsev-Platonov ascribes to a priori forms of cognition not only subjective but also objective meaning. I conclude that Kudryavtsev-Platonov’s transcendental monism is genetically connected with Krug’s transcendental synthetism, i.e. its modification with a metaphysical slant. Krug’s ideas show themselves in a peculiar way in the Russian philosopher’s epistemological ideas: in the methodology of deriving the main principles of philosophy, in the structure of cognition and in the place the latter assigns to it in the system of philosophical knowledge.

The focus of this article is an interpretation of the key Kantian thesis, “being is not a real predicate”, advanced by Heidegger in his lecture course, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927) wherein it is presented as one of the four fundamental theses on ‘being’ in the history of philosophy. The article describes the historical-philosophical context for Kant’s critique of the ontological proof of the existence of God. This critique is based on three interconnected components: logical, epistemological, and ontological. Next, it describes the specificities of the Kantian conceptual apparatus, with a detailed analysis of concepts key to understanding Kant’s thesis — ‘reality’, ‘real predicate’, and ‘being’ — and explains the relation of these concepts to the Kantian categories. I submit that Heidegger is interested not so much in the content of the Kantian critique of the ontological argument as in Kant’s interpretation of the concepts of ‘being’ and ‘existence’, which are central to the development of a fundamental ontology. Heidegger reduces the opaqueness of these concepts to the problem of the definition of the concept of ‘perception’; and, challenging Kant’s identification of existence with ‘perception’, argues that existence cannot be identical either to the act of perception, or to the perceived object, nor to its ‘perceivedness’ (Wahrgenommenheit). Heidegger accuses Kant of a lack of clarity, and of a positive definition of the concept of ‘existence’ — which, however, does not undermine the relevance of Kant’s thesis as a starting point for his own fundamental ontology. I demonstrate that, in spite of its shortcomings, Heidegger sees the Kantian thesis as a solid foundation upon which to pursue further the project of building ontology as phenomenology. This, however, calls for a more solid grounding and clarification of the horizon within which the question of ‘being’ is raised.

In this article, I attempt to reconstruct Kant’s enlightenment project, viewed as a complex phenomenon which combines various programmatic principles of all three Critiques, and which offers a special perspective on the perception of modernity. I have chosen, as the lens for my analysis, the interpretation of Michel Foucault, who presents Kant’s project as a phased transition from philosophical critique to political pragmatics. Following the path charted by Foucault, I analyse a number of ideas developed by Kant within the framework of his critical philosophy, which laid the theoretical foundations for subsequent implementations of his enlightenment project in daily political practices. The first part of my study examines the concept of epistemic autonomy as a prerequisite of legitimate governance, first of oneself, and then of others. The second part analyses the experience of ‘heroisation of the present’, which determines people’s attitudes toward their historical epoch. The third part explores the concept of ‘common sense’ as the basis of the political mechanism that makes agreement possible among citizens with respect to social issues. I arrive at conclusions which present the perception of modernity, in the context of Kant’s enlightenment project, as the experience of existence within a special historical space that is open not only to critique but also to action and dialogue, and in which the three Kantian Critiques appear as mutually complementary aspects of a single critique of the present moment in modern discourse.