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1. Bremer U. Visionen der Wende. Eine textanalytische Untersuchung erzählerischer Prosa junger deutscher Autoren zur Wiedervereinigung. Osnabrück, 2002. 2. Brussig Th. Helden wie wir. Frankfurt a/M., 1999. 3. Solms-Laubach F. Ost- und Westdeutsche entfernen sich voneinander [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://www.welt.de/politik/article3775359/Ostund-Westdeutsche-entfernen-sich-voneinander. html 4. Schalk A. Coitus germaniae interruptus. Die deutsche Wiedervereinigung im Spiegel von Prosa...

Kant’s natural philosophy in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is heavily influenced by Newton’s Principia. However, a closer look makes it clear that Kant’s project has also been influenced by other thinkers. One of these thinkers is Leonard Euler. His work was of great influence for Kant, not only with regards to his view on space and inertia but on the relation between metaphysics and natural science in general. Even though Euler’s Physics built on Newton’s work, he differs from...

Neo-Kantianism is traditionally seen as a philosophy that was formed to develop and actualise Kant’s philosophy and Kantian transcendental methodology. However, Kant was the determining, but by no means the only, influence on the emergence of the neo-Kantian tradition. Neo-Kantianism was strongly influenced by the entire German post-Kantian philosophy, especially by Fichte and Hegel, although neo-Kantians have repeatedly tried to dissociate themselves from the great idealists. In many ways neo-Kantianism...

Both the categories and principles of understanding as well as the ideas and principles of reason build transcendental elements to conceive transcendental philosophy as a philosophical system. Accordingly, in addition to the “Transcendental Analytic”, Kant develops in the “Transcendental Dialectic” an expanded concept of the transcendental. The transcendental ideas do not denote object-constitutive principles but, in a weaker sense, conditions of the possibility of experience. The relation between...

In the mid-1760s, Johann Heinrich Lambert wrote a letter to Kant who offered cooperation with a view to reforming metaphysics. Based on the short correspondence between the two philosophers, it can be shown that this cooperation could never really come about. Nevertheless the thesis was sometimes put forward in research that Lambert had a defining influence on Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, also, and above all, with regard to the Newton-critical moments of this natur­al theory...

... That is why in both prefaces to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787) Kant introduces the concept of transcendental philosophy as an “idea.” The idea understood architectonically develops slowly and only gradually acquires a definite form. As witnessed by the works of Kant himself and of his predecessors and followers, the idea of transcendental philosophy has undergone a series of changes and adjustments compared to the initial plan. In this context, my goal is not simply exegesis and historical ...

... science. The authors consider Kant’s treatise to be a hybrid text: on the one hand, it attests to the importance of the natural science paradigm and the degree of its influence on the humanities in the modern period; and, on the other hand, it bears witness to the multi-genre character of philosophical treatises, combining as they do the considered and serious wisdom of philosophy, the precision of scientific terminology and the figurativeness of a work of fiction. Kant is perceived not only as a ...

The interpretation of Kant’s philosophy by thinkers in pre-Soviet Belarus has been the subject of not a few publications. They described the reception of his seminal ideas, the analysis, polemic and occasionally sharp criticism of these ideas. It is helpful now to look at Kantian studies beginning from the 1920s to the present time. I will show that immediately after the October 1917 revolution and until the 1930s interest in Kant’s teaching was waning. When they turned to his ideas during that period...

It is necessary to reconsider P. M. S. Hacker’s assessment of Kant and Wittgenstein’s philosophical affinities and the question concerning Wittgenstein’s alleged use of “transcendental arguments”. First, Alfred Norman’s reading of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a thought experiment receives revision to develop a view of the Critique of Pure Reason as a large-scale thought experiment that shares important logical features with the Tractatus. Then the question is addressed whether the middle...

Among the most peculiar traits of Kant’s critical philosophy is the contention that, while we can know our moral maxims and can thus reflect on our actions from a moral point of view, we cannot really know whether in a given situation our actions are actually motivated by those maxims. This means that, although we have a firm sense of our moral duties, we can never be certain whether some particular action of ours is done from duty or simply in accordance with it. This view is voiced in several of...

Some ideas expressed in the collective monograph Universality in Morality (2020), edited by Ruben Apressyan, are here critically examined. The book is based on the results of a large-scale study by professional ethical philosophers devoted to the question of the nature of universality in morality and the mechanisms of universalisation of individual maxims and norms from antiquity to modern ethical theories, represented above all by the analytical tradition in philosophy. Of great interest is the...

The hypothetical approach to the supersensible developed by Kant in his three Critiques, exemplified by his analysis of the aesthetic and reflective judgment in his third Critique, with their principle fortuitous purposiveness, can be considered as the basis for a new foundation of metaphysics. According to Kant’s limitation of cognition to the realm of sense intuition, theoretical knowledge of God, the subject, things-in-themselves, transcendental ideas is impossible. This leads to a kind of “negative...

An unrecognised copy (1665) in Kant’s private library of Michael Piccart’s Isagoge (1605), an introduction to the system of Aristotelian philosophy together with Kant’s own remarks on this author (Refl 4160, AA 17, p. 439) can be established as an original source for the Kantian ‘ideosphere’. First, I point out contexts and consequences of Piccart’s Altdorfian Aristotelianism, in contrast to the Königsbergian Aristotelianism (emphasised by Tonelli’s research). To further check the quality of Piccart...

I critically examine the plausibility of Kant’s conception of rationalising, a form of self-deception that plays a crucial role for Kant’s moral psychology and his conception of the functions of critical practical philosophy. The main problem I see with Kant’s conception is that there are no theory-independent criteria to determine whether an exercise of rational capacities constitutes rationalising. Kant believes that rationalising is wide-spread and he charges the popular philosophers and other...

This article assesses the role of Immanuel Kant’s ideas in the historical philosophy of Gustav Shpet (1879—1937). This theme has been largely ignored by Shpet scholars who have concentrated on comparing his logical-methodological theories with the ideas of representatives of phenomenology (E. Husserl, R. Ingarden and others) and hermeneutics (F. Schleiermacher, W. Dilthey, H. Lipps, H.-G. Gadamer and others). Accordingly, the authors consistently reconstruct “the sphere of conversation” within which...

Reconstructing the evolution of Gramsci’s judgement about the Russian Revolution implies an overall rethinking of his own relation to Marx as well as to Kant. Already in the spring of 1917, Gramsci foresaw that the February Revolution could become a proletarian revolution and that this would realise in fact Kant’s moral: only a society completely freed from oppression and exploitation would allow people to be free and autonomous. After the fall of the Winter Palace, Gramsci wrote that the revolution...

The Russian intuitivist philosopher Nikolay Lossky repeatedly admitted Kant’s substantial formative influence on him as a scholar. Moreover, Lossky was a disciple of the Russian Kantian Aleksander Vvedensky, and was one of the most successful translators of the first Critique. However, his own philosophical project is rather the opposite of the critical programme. While in the framework of Lossky’s epistemology the specificities of his reading of Kant have received a fair amount of attention in Russian...

Kant’s deduction of the Christian doctrine of justification, respectively the doctrine of grace, leads to the question in what sense philosophy can deal with God’s grace without falsely replacing it with its own arguments. Kant’s answer (a) is that the imputation of evil without attempt to justify it by means of one’s own resources requires thinking of God as the external judge in the internal court of justice, respectively as one’s conscience. This reference to God implies that one makes oneself...

The early decades of the last century saw European philosophical thought becoming increasingly interested in the sociological extension of the idea of law. From the viewpoint of the sociology of law, law is formed in the process of social interactions and is not sanctioned by the state. Sergey Hessen and Georges Gurvitch base their conceptions of social law on the sociology of law in the 1920s and 1930s. They start a polemic in the pages of the journal Sovremenniye zapiski (Contemporary Notes). Although...

The prevailing interpretations of Spinoza’s ethical theory view it as an example of heteronomy in the Kantian sense of the term. I make a case for the claim that is not in harmony with such interpretations. In the course of the argument I discuss Kant’s concepts of autonomy and heteronomy showing how they refer to will and to ethics. Then I describe a group of interpretations which portray Spinoza’s moral theory as heteronomous. My critique begins by presenting some textual evidence which vividly...

Sergey Hessen builds his philosophy of culture on Heinrich Rickert’s theory of values. Like Rickert, he believes that the individual plays a key role in the formation of culture. The individual exercises freedom only in creative activity and the degree to which he fulfils his creative potential depends not only on the cultural context in which it happens, but also on the regulation of the opportunities for self-actualisation in any given society. Accordingly, Hessen defines society as the sphere...

In this essay, I specify types of representational content that can be attributed to Kant’s account of representation. The more specific aim is to examine which of these types of content can be regarded as possible without the application of concepts. In order to answer the question, I proceed as follows. First, I show how intuition (in Kant’s sense) can be seen as providing indexical content independently of empirical concepts. Second, I show in what sense the generation of spatial content can be...

n this article, which completes a two-part series on the problem of optimism in Kant’s works, I explore in detail the arguments advanced by the Crusians A. F. Reinhard and D. Weymann against the actual world as the best of all possible worlds and in favour of the actual world as one of the good worlds, Kant’s counterarguments put forward in the mid-1750s drafts and in An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism (1759), and further polemical attacks on this topic against Kant by D. Weymann in his works...

Kant’s dissertation for the Master’s degree Succinct Exposition of Some Meditations on Fire was written in Latin in 1755 as a sample (specimen) preceding a Master’s exam, but its first printing did not appear until 1838. What is the relevance of this Master’s dissertation for historical and philosophical studies? To answer this question I analyse the structure and give a brief summary of the dissertation, look at the history of its writing and try to identify the place of this work among Kant’s other...

The expression “linguistic Kantianism” is widely used to refer to ideas about thought and cognition being determined by language — a conception characteristic of 20th century analytic philosophy. In this article, I conduct a comparative analysis of Kant’s philosophy and views falling under the umbrella expression “linguistic Kantianism.” First, I show that “linguistic Kantianism” usually presupposes a relativistic conception that is alien to Kant’s philosophy (although Kant’s philosophy itself may...

A stable classification of practical principles into mutually exclusive types is foundational to Kant’s moral theory. Yet, other than a few brief hints on the distinction between maxims and laws, he does not provide any elaborate discussion on the classification and the types of practical principles in his works. This has led Onora O’Neill and Lewis Beck to reinterpret Kant’s classification of practical principles in a way that would clarify the conceptual connection between maxims and laws. In this...

Heiko Puls’ work Sittliches Bewusstsein und Kategorischer Imperativ in Kants Grundlegung: Ein Kommentar zum dritten Abschnitt, presents an attempt to show that, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s argumentation for the objective value of the categorical imperative is almost based upon the same principle as the one presented in the second Critique. More precisely, Puls claims that, like in the Critique of Practical Reason, the Groundwork operates with some kind of fact of reason-theory...

In the focus of my attention there are six German-language textbooks in logic published in the second half of the eighteenth century. What distinguishes these books is that they were all written specially for women. While such works were fairly common in France and Italy during this period, they had something of an exotic character in the German-speaking world. Today these works and their authors are generally seen as secondary and marginal. Nevertheless, they may be of substantial interest in the...

Carl Arnold Wilmans received his degree of doctor in philosophy in Halle in 1797 for a bold thesis. He claimed a latent similarity between Kant’s enlightened philosophy of religion and the pure mysticism of some so-called separatists — and sent his work to Kant. The fact that and how the latter re­acted to it, makes the matter all the more interesting. Could Kant have been a secret mystic? The following study attempts to give a differ­entiated presentation of Kant’s intellectual relationship with...

Numerous passages in the context of Kant’s philosophy of religion show without doubt his acquaintance with Lessing. But apart from the obvious affinity and agreement between Kant and Lessing with regard to many substantial questions, serious differences cannot be overlooked; the frequently diagnosed closeness and widely suspected “harmony” between the two is probably also the primary reason why important factual differences and controversial aspects have so far usually been neglected or ignored in...

This article is devoted to the origins of the "aesthetic turn" in contemporary philosophy and the increasing importance of aesthetic categories and art experience for contemporary theories. Kant’s aesthetics, concepts of beauty, the sublime, genius, as well as various aspects of their interpretation within the romantic doctrine of "new mythology" and aestheticisation of life, the discovery of a fragment as a way of poetic thinking became topical in contemporary debates about reality...

The hypothesis on the existence of a specific "Kaliningrad text" as a metatext, which emerged in the conditions of regional subculture, is put forward and confirmed in the framework of the semiotic paradigm of culture analysis. Metatext is understood as an invariant of all texts within the given culture, which embodies the content, world image, and sociocultural codes of the culture. The content and structure of the metatext are determined by the analysis of different cultural texts. ...

Zusammen mit dem Protagonisten des Romans von Ralf Ellison „Invisible Man“ akzeptiert der Autor des Beitrags das Problem der Demütigung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit mittels des „Hindurchschauens“, des „looking through“. Der Autor hebt die Frage hervor, „was zur Wahrnehmung, zum "Erkennen" einer Person hinzutreten muss, um daraus einen Akt der Anerkennung zu machen“. Mit diesem Ziel wird die Bedeutung der (Un-)Sichtbarkeit im direkten und indirekten Sinne eingeführt, sowie Ergebnisse...

Kant insisted on the inherent unity of a priori and empirical elements of cognition. To what extent further progress of philosophy and exact sciences confirmed (or modified) original Kant ideas? I'm inclined to judge that apriorism in its modest version do not contradict to modest type of empiricism. Real practice of logical and mathematical reasoning provides pry conjunctions of a priori and empirical elements of cognitive processes. We can find their harmonic combinations of mentioned standpoints...

This paper deals with the forms of satisfaction in the Critique of Judgement — disinterested affection for a beautiful form in a pure feeling, vital love for something sensorily pleasant, rational respect for unconditioned good, and non-self-regarding love for humanity. A synthetic union of the above gives the conceptual key to the critical philosophy of love, which was never fully articulated in Kant’s lectures or published works. Moral love and legal awareness prevent the encroachment of vital...

This article analyses Kant’s transcendental philosophy (transcendentalism) and its central concept — the thing in itself is the kind of concept without which it is impossible to enter Kant’s philosophy (a paraphrase of Jacobi’s maxim). Methodologically, transcendentalism implies a transcendental turn from studying [empirical] objects to analysing the [transcendental] conditions of their cognition. Metaphysically, Kant’s transcendentalism rests on the crucial distinction between the thing in itself...

Contrary to the standard view in the Kant literature, I argue that the concept of “existence” is the real focus of Kant’s investigation in the “First Moment” of the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. That is, “existence” is not a secondary or subordinate part of a more general discourse concerning the “disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment”. Rather, the whole characterization of the judgment of taste as a “judgment of an object grounded on a delight in it which...

In this article, I consider Kant’s dichotomy between general and transcendental logic in light of a retrospective reconstruction of two approaches originating in 14th century scholasticism that are used to demarcate formal and material consequences. The first approach (e. g., John Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen) holds that a consequence is formal if it is valid — because of its form only — for any matter. Since the matter of a consequence is linked to categorematic terms, its formal...

This article focuses on the question of what “progress in knowledge” (Fortschritt im Wissen) since the Enlightenment could mean. The answer is rooted in a shift in perspective in our understanding of the Enlightenment, and in an awareness of the gnoseotope at the center of this perspectival shift. Given the fact that human knowledge has always been considered li­mited, the axiom called gnoseotope (from Greek gnōsis: cognition, know­ledge and topos: place, area, field) can be defined as the area of...

This is a report of the international workshop «Transcendental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy 2: Kant’s Appearance, Its Ontological and Epistemic Status» (April 27—29, 2017, Moscow), the tasks of which was (1) to discuss the specificity of transcendental idealism, (2) to study the nature of one of Kant’s important concepts — that of appearance — within the framework of the essential conceptual triad of transcendentalism: thing in itself (Ding an sich) — appearance (Erscheinung) — representation...

This paper presents a critical review of an article by the eminent Russian Kantianist Prof A. N. Kruglov published under the title “Immaturity and the objective of a true reform in ways of thinking” in Kantovsky Sbornik (issues 3—4, 2014). The critical analysis focuses on the practical conclusion, in which Prof Kruglov expresses his negative attitude to the French Revolution and shows ambiguous disapproval of Kant’s positive attitude to it. This ambiguity can discredit modern practical philosophy...

Швейцер А. Философия религии Канта (от «Критики чистого разума» до «Религии в пределах только разума»). Предисловие. Ч. 1 // Кантовский сборник. 2016. Т. 35, № 2. С. 109—118 ; № 3. С. 82—98 ; № 4. С. 73—78 ; 2017. Т. 36, № 1. С. 90—103.

Kant’s transcendental philosophy (transcendentalism) focuses on both the human method of cognition in general [CPR, B 25] and certain types of cognition aimed at justifying their objective significance. This article aims to explicate Kant’s understanding (resp. justification) of the abstract nature of mathematical knowledge (cognition) as the “construction of concepts in intuition” (see: “to construct a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to it”; [CPR, A 713/В 741], which...

This article examines the category of modality through the postulate of empirical thinking in general and in constructing a philosophical system where functions of consciousness are substantial elements. The system comprises ‘faculties of the mind’, as Kant calls them, namely, evaluation, cognition, and practical activity and norms. These forms of activity correlate with the world of possibilities, the actual world, and the world of necessity. Grammatical moods correspond to the modal worlds and...