2026 Vol. 45. №1

In § 26 of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant calls the “Leitfaden” section of the Transcendental Analytic (A 67-79 / B 91-106) “metaphysical deduction” (MD). The MD is a relatively short, but fundamental (and somewhat enigmatic) passage. While contemporary contributions offer detailed reconstructions of the MD, which also help to settle a series of thorny exegetic questions much debated in MD’s classic and current reception, I propose to take a step back and ask about the general setting of the MD, and about its meta-philosophical and metalogical implications. I believe that the question of the role of “formal logic” in philosophy, and in the establishment of a philosophical logic (something which was at the heart of Hegel’s interests in reading these Kantian passages), is at stake here. I begin the paper by examining some controversies concerning the question of the contribution of Kant’s thinking about logic to the history of logic. I then turn to Hegel’s reading of Kant’s thoughts about formal logic and truth (A 57-60 / B 82-84) in the Science of Logic. I conclude by critically assessing Hegel’s critique of Kant’s supposed “formalism”. While Hegel laments Kant’s anti-alethic treatment of the forms of judgement and of the categorial forms, I show how Kant accomplishes, in fact, an important operation of repositioning and rethinking traditional logic; and, in so doing, makes a crucial step towards the establishment of a philosophical logic.

Space and time may be seen either as independent entities, as properties of things or as properties inherent in the subject. Kant, of course, maintains that space and time have a subjective character: he rules out their objective reality, which leads to a substantial separation of the cognising subject and the reality being cognised. This approach to the definition of the ontological and epistemological statuses of space and time is often criticised in the studies of Kantian philosophy. Attempts are made to clarify the objective side of cognition and the exclusiveness of the subjectivistic conception of space and time is problematised, leading to interpretations that try, along with subjectivity, to reconstruct the objective component in Kant’s understanding of space and time. This article purports to summarise and systematise the approaches which stress the ambivalence of Kant’s conception of space and time. The study identifies the following main approaches to the problem of the relation between subjectivity and objectivity of space and time in Kant’s philosophy: 1) the approach which claims that space and time in Kant’s philosophy are subjective only in the epistemological sense whereas ontologically they have objective reality; 2) the position which interprets subjectivity and objectivity of space and time in the context of the Kantian distinction between transcendental idealism and empirical realism; 3) the interpretation which stresses subjectivity as objective validity; 4) the subjective-objective understanding of space and time. I arrive at the conclusion that subjective-objective interpretations of the Kantian doctrine of space and time are mainly based on the problematisation of the concept of subjectivity, which is manifested in the broadening or, on the contrary, the narrowing of the concept of subjectivity, making it more complex and hierarchical, establishing a link between this concept and the concept of empirical reality and the concept of general validity.

This article examines Kant’s ideas on the a priori character of space and time in the context of modern cognitive research and neuroscience. Proceeding from the Kantian view of space and time as forms of sensibility, I look at how neurobiological data confirm and simultaneously modify classical philosophical nativism. I pay particular attention to empirically-confirmed, inborn cognitive mechanisms such as the “sense of number” and the supposed “sense of space” which have ontogenetic and neural foundations. I look at discoveries pertaining to the brain’s navigation systems, including “place” cells, which point to the existence of a functionally autonomous “geometric” (and not just a “number”) module. This module has been shown to play a key role, not only in one’s orientation in physical space, but also in the formation of abstract concepts, semantic structures, and social ties. I examine data on the independence of basic geometric intuition from cultural and sensory experience, including research on spatial representations in born-blind individuals. A special section is devoted to the analysis of the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect: its possible influence on the character of the writing system, and, conversely, of script configuration on spatial-numerical and cognitive associations. This phenomenon demonstrates an interconnection between the perception of numbers and direction in space, which is partly determined by cultural features: people with left-to-right writing associate numbers of a larger magnitude with the right side, while people who write from right to left have the reverse association. Thus, human perceptions of space and time are the result of intricate interactions between congenital properties of the nervous system and extra-personal cultural influence. In conclusion, I stress the prospectivity of the concept “biocultural co-constructivism”, according to which congenital neuron structures and cultural practices are in dynamic interaction, and which promises deeper insight into the meaning of the Kantian research programme as implemented in modern neuroscience.