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Kant’s treatise “The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures” has logical, epistemological, and cognitive-psychological implications. These three perspectives on his conclusions are practically undifferentiated. The first part of this article discusses the logical and ontological-gnoseological content of the treatise in order to reveal the prerequisites for the cognitive interpretation of syllogisms. The second part is an attempt to explicate the treatise’s cognitive content, i.e. a systemic representation of the cognitive properties of syllogisms, as understood by Kant. Kant’s syllogism is characterised as an intellectual act aimed at eliminating opaqueness in cognition and consists of several mental procedures. The cognitive properties of syllogisms are discoverable in Kant’s general characterisation of syllogisms, as well as in the characteristic marks of individual figures. The third part is an attempt to reconstruct Kant’s cognitive syllogistics from angles which can be discerned, but are not explicitly discussed, in the treatise. This reconstruction is based on the distinction Kant draws between two modes of formulating conclusions, one of which is “in the form of judgements”. Here, formal and “ontological” syllogisms are distinguished by the type of relation that obtains between parts of the premises. An ontological syllogism, unlike the formal kind, conforms to the most stringent rules in terms of content. The procedure of making an inference, even according to a perfect figure, is described as ‘composite’, involving, as it does, the transformation of a formal syllogism into an ontological one, or the supplementing of the formal syllogism with an intermediate inference which brings the parts of the syllogism under the categories contained in the highest rules. Errors in inferences in individual cognition are attributed to the use of the “form of judgements”, which obscures the connections that must be clearly understood according to the highest rules. In conclusion, the author systematically presents the cognitive content of the treatise and outlines cognitive pathways that are generated by the ideas of “The False Subtlety” and connected with the study of the unfolding of syllogisms in cognitive reality.

Kant’s theory of enthusiasm has received relatively little attention in Kant studies. This is surprising in view of the fact that Kant was preoccupied with the theme of enthusiasm throughout his life. One of the reasons may be that for Kant enthusiasm is an affect. Therefore, it cannot be used to justify ethics. On closer examination, however, a more differentiated picture emerges. In addition to pathological enthusiasm, Kant recognises an aesthetically sublime enthusiasm, and in his reflections on the reaction to the events of the French Revolution, Kant coined the concept of a true enthusiasm, related to the ideas of freedom and justice. Finally, Kant introduces the concept of the enthusiasm of good resolution. It is a preliminary stage of the feeling of respect for the moral law in moral education. It is no longer regarded as an affect, but is under the guidance of reason. The first part discusses the partly incompatible conceptions of enthusiasm. The second part examines Jean-François Lyotard’s interpretation and critique of Kant’s philosophical-historical theory of enthusiasm. In the face of the devastating catastrophes of the twentieth century, Lyotard sees no reason for the enthusiasm that Kant perceived in the people’s reaction to the French Revolution and interpreted as a prognostic sign of future history. It has been replaced by a general world-weariness. However, Lyotard’s critique of Kant is based on a historicist fallacy. The reference to historical catastrophes is not an argument against the a priori validity of the ideas of freedom and justice and against the endeavour for their realisation.

It was not until German Idealism that philosophy briefly regained the importance it had in antiquity. This is indicated precisely by the “peripeteia” in the concept of experience. When Kant and Hegel write about experience, they mean quite different things on the other. Kant’s concept of experience is law-like, invariant and rigid. Only for this reason can it form the basis for a critical reflection on the validity of knowledge. However, Hegel’s analysis of object experience “dynamises” Kant’s concept in various ways: firstly, he provides an interpretation of the process of how perception and its contents ultimately become the “play of forces” via the life of things. Secondly, Hegel works out the self-referentiality of the subject in this process of experience. Finally, Hegel shows how the experience of objects refers beyond itself to more complex forms of knowledge. In the chapter “Power and Understanding” of his Phenomenology of Spirit he undertakes a subtle differentiation of what Kant calls “objective cognition” and shows, on the one hand, which process is already necessary in order to grasp a thing even sensually. On the other hand, he analyses the different levels of experience that are already involved in the simple process of perception. The authors analyse this process as a silent dialogue between Kant and Hegel and show why Hegel’s concept of experience can claim to contribute more to the understanding of man than Kant’s.

The history of the reception and interpretation of Neo-Kantian ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shows the special role played by those who took a negative stand with regard to Neo-Kantianism and sought to dissociate it from and oppose it to Kant’s legacy. A prominent place among the latter was occupied by Georgy V. Plekhanov, most of whose works were fiercely polemical. Highly rating Kant’s works, in which he even found some coincidences with materialism, Plekhanov for a number of years engaged in polemics on philosophical and political issues with the German Neo-Kantians and Eduard Bernstein, who shared many of their views. Calling Neo-Kantianism, after Friedrich Engels, “a step backwards” from Kant’s philosophy, he argued that Neo-Kantians had misunderstood Kant’s philosophy and, in advocating a return to Kant’s theoretical philosophy in order to use it to refute contemporary materialism, had distorted Kant’s doctrine. Plekhanov’s so-called “defence” of Kant against Neo-Kantians should not be understood and accepted literally. Being a Marxist, Plekhanov tried to defend above all the views of Marx and Engels by revealing the flaws in the Neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant. Although he himself in some ways misinterpreted Kant, his views command some interest today because many of them played a certain role in the perception of Kant in the Soviet and post-Soviet times and were reflected in the discussions of the Kantian philosophy as a whole, especially its fundamental concept of the “thing-in-itself”.