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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...

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both...

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the question of whether humans should reproduce. Some say human life is too punishing and cruel to impose upon an innocent. Others hold that such harms do not undermine the great and possibly unique value of human life. Tracing these outlooks historically in the debate has barely begun. What might philosophers have said, or what did they say, about human life itself and its value to merit reproduction? Herein it is useful to look to Kant, who wrote much...

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...

To reconstruct a critique of the ontological proof of the existence of God in Schelling’s philosophy I examine his interpretation of the ontological argument by Anselm of Canterbury and Descartes as well as Schelling’s assessment of the critique of the Kantian ontological proof of the existence of God. I propose a reconstruction of Schelling’s account of undoubted being which cannot be deduced from the concept of the totality of all that is possible and therefore must come before any thought. He...

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 “Cambridge pragmatists”, Charles S. Peirce, William James and Josiah Royce, are at least in two respects significantly indebted to Kant: first, as von Kempski, Apel and Murphey have shown, with regard to the epistemological issues investigated in pragmatism; secondly, with regard to the various pragmatic approaches to religion, something which has been long overlooked. These approaches are best understood as innovative re-readings of Kant’s postulates of freedom, immortality, and God. Since Hilary...

De Boer, K., 2020. Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics: The Critique of Pure Reason Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gloy, K., 1998. Bewusstseinstheorien: zur Problematik und Problemgeschichte des Bewusstseins und Selbstbewusstseins. Freiburg & München: Alber. Henrich, D., 1966. Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht. In: Subjektivität und Metaphysik. Festschrift für Wolfgang Cramer. Edited by D. Henrich and H. Wagner. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 188-232. Lewin, M., 2021. Das...

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...

The text of Kant’s first dissertation is a translation from Latin from an academic publication of a collection of Kant’s works: Kant, I. Meditationum quarundam de igne succincta delineatio... In: Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed., 1910. Kants Gesammelte Schriften. 1. Abhandling: Werke. Band I: Vorkritische Schriften I, 1747-1756. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1910, pp. 369-384. The publication is available at https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg- essen.de/kant/aa01/ [Accessed 10 March 2019]...

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...

The concept of appearance within the framework of the transcendental distinction between “appearance” and “thing in itself” is the cornerstone of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. However, its conceptual status seems largely uncertain. This uncertainty is the reason for a wide range of interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. A paradigmatic example is the contemporary confrontation between the “two objects” theory and the “two aspects” theory. In this paper, I develop a semantico-cognitive...

Kant was never satisfied with the version of his “Refutation” published in 1787 (KrV, B 275-279). His dissatisfaction is already evident in the footnote added to the preface of the second edition of the Critique in 1787. As a matter of fact, Kant continued to rework his argument for at least six years after 1787. The main exegetical problem is to figure out who is the target of the “Refutation”: a non-sceptic idealist or a global sceptic of Cartesian provenance or both. In this last case, a related...

Kant, I., 1991. Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History. In: I. Kant, 1991. Political Writings. Edited by H. Reiss, translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 221-235. Korsgaard, C.M., 1996a. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, C.M., 1996b. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, C.M., 2004. Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals. In: G. B. Peterson, ed. 2004. The...

This interview with Professor Dr Jürgen Stolzenberg, board member of the Kant-Gesellschaft and co-editor of the Kant-Lexikon (2015), explores a wide range of topics — from Leibniz and Wolff to Heidegger and Husserl. The leading idea of Stolzenberg’s philosophical research is the justification of the principle of modern subjectivity in Kant’s philosophy and its transformations until our days. He discusses the meaning and development of the concept of self-consciousness and the understanding of subjectivity...

Kant’s concept of Gesinnung reveals the whole range of its problematic potential when it has to be translated into other languages: there are no ready-made equivalents. The problem stems from the evolution of this concept in Kant himself from the pre-Critical (“mode of thinking”, “convictions”, “virtuousness”, “virtues”, “sentiments”, “inclinations”, “aspirations”) to the critical works and then in the Critical period in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Further problems arise from the complex...

In the Cartesian tradition of discussing the structure of the micro-judgement “I think” Kant‘s treatment deserves extraordinary attention. Under the idiomatic heading of self-affection he delivers a micro-analysis of this judgment, contributing in a unique way to the clarification of a singular case of self-knowledge: In this case the thinking subject 1. thematises the act of judging “I think” by conferring on this act the specific logical, categorical form, 2. intuits this act under the temporal...

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...

At the centre of discussion lies the reception of Plato’s philosophy, particularly his theory of Ideas, in Kant’s moral philosophy, his ethics and his doctrine of right. Kant saw himself as a follower of Platonism insofar as its anti-empiri­cist principles of human conduct are concerned, although his own version of practical rationalism differs considerably from Plato’s. This is also true of Kant’s conception of freedom and of human rights. The greatest impact on Kant’s moral philosophy is due to...

The philosophy of religion as presented by Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, the founders and main representatives of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, is an important and at the same time controversial part of their philosophical systems. The discussion around the problems of religion began within the Marburg School and still continues among those who study that School. The reason for this is that “fitting” philosophical thinking about the phenomenon of religion into the classical triad of any...

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...

The sources of Kant’s term Gesinnung and a review of the problems of its translation into English were presented in the first part of this article; the second part examines the novel features that Kant brings to the interpretation of this concept in the critical period. In the Critique of Practical Reason these include the questions of manifestation of Gesinnung in the world, apprehended through the senses, the method of establishing and the culture of truly moral Gesinnung, as well as the problem...

My aim is to demonstrate the specificities and differences between transcendental deduction of concepts and deduction of the fundamental principles of pure practical reason in Kant’s metaphysics. First of all it is necessary to examine Kant’s attitude to the metaphysics of his time and the problem of its new justification. Kant in his philosophy explicated not only the theoretical world of cognition, but also the practical world of freedom. Accordingly, the fundamental means of proving metaphysics’...

I proceed from the hypothesis that the difficulties in Kant’s presentation of his plan and, accordingly, the implicit reason for the critical attitude to this plan on the part of many contemporary philosophers stem from the fact that he had no theoretical link at his disposal which would offer a more solid scientific grounding for his entire system. I believe that Darwinism is such a link which bolsters the central but ungrounded thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason on the existence of a priori...

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 aim is to examine Alois Riehl’s contribution to the “culture war” (Kulturkampf) in the second half of the nineteenth century. We show that he used Kant’s autonomy principle to argue against the idea that religious dogmatism is a fundament of morality. We prove this thesis by focusing on the forgotten historical background, which is important for an understanding of Morals und Dogma. Originally this essay was an expert opinion for the court case of the socialist H. Tauschinski who was accused...

In this study, I investigate the philosophico-pedagogical concepts developed by German and Russian Neo-Kantians, namely P. Natorp, S. I. Hessen, M. M. Rubinstein. In order to identify the peculiarities of the approaches of the Neo-Kantians to legal consciousness in children, I show that the widely accepted view that Hessen borrowed Natorp’s hierarchical triad of moral development — anomie, heteronomy, and autonomy — lacks a solid ground. Moreover, Natorp generally does not use the concept of anomie...

The ethics of Kant and the ethics of Crusius are strikingly similar. This is manifested in a whole range of principles and concepts. Crusius’ moral teaching hinges on the rigorous moral law which has to be obeyed absolutely, and which makes it different from other prescriptions that are binding only to a relative degree. This is very close to the Kantian distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Another salient feature of Crusius’ moral teaching is the stress laid on the sphere...

The study of the “first wave” of reactions to the Critique of Pure Reason in Germany from the second half of the 1780s until the beginning of the nineteenth century reveals the paradoxical status of the Kantian transcendental subject. While the existence of the transcendental subject, whatever the term means, is not open to question since it arises from the very essence of critical philosophy, the fundamental status of the subject is sometimes questioned in this period. Although the meaning of the...

This article analyses, first of all, the epistemological theory of reflection (Abbildtheorie) of Heinrich Rickert, the main representative of the Baden Neo-Kantianism School. The author analyses the key arguments put forward by Rickert against the understanding of cognition as a reflection of reality. Rickert’s standpoint is neutral. He criticises the transcendental theory of reflection, but does not reject the idea of reflection as a model of cognition and acknowledges the immanent theory of reflection...

This article offers a comparative analysis of Kant's moral philosophy and the philosophy of Sade revealing the paradoxes of the categorical imperative. The satisfaction of the requirement of the categorical imperative is, on the one hand, a single and unique act and, on the other hand, a permanent and universal one. Although the familiarity with the categorical imperative does not always result in a moral action, the familiarity itself alongside the idea of forgiveness may be considered as a manifestation...

Die moderne Kant-Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte hat zu einer Neuinterpretation der theoretischen Grundlagen von Kants Metaphysik bzw. Erkenntnistheorie der Erfahrung geführt. Diese Deutungen können zu einer modifizierten Wiederbelebung und Neueinsetzung der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie im Sinne eines kritischen Restrealismus und zu einer modernen konstruktivistischen Umdeutung von Kants transzendentalphilosophischem Ansatz Anlass bieten, die — mit relativ geringer „Liberalisierung“ und Modifikation...

Anhand einer Analyse von Kants Religionsschrift wird ein Nachweis versucht, in der Kantischen Religionsphilosophie, neben der Perspektive einer autonomistischen Vernunftreligion, auch eine transzendental konforme Grundlage zur christlichen Geistesphilosophie, im Sinne der sittlichen Lebensganzheit, und auch für eine Philosophie der Offenbarung, vorhanden ist. Kant hat die Religionsphilosophie im Neuen Europa sowohl möglich, als auch fast ebenso unmöglich gemacht. 1. Кант И. Религия в пределах только...

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...

Alle drei Bedeutungen des Begriffs “Ding an sich” (Objekt, Subjekt und ihre Verbindung), sogar trotz ihrer direkten Gegensätzlichkeit, sind im philosophischen System Kants der Gegenstand der Hauptfrage der Philosophie. Kant ist der Neuerer sowie in der Fragestellung als auch in der Antwort. Diese Antwort ist agnostisch, aber nicht im empirischen oder wissenschaftlichen Sinne, sondern in der spezifisch philosophischen Bedeutung dieser Begriffe. Die Antwort auf diese Frage — nach dem Menschen wie nach...

This article constitutes the first block of a study into publications of Russian thinkers in Kant-Studien — the leading journal of international Kant studies and the main periodical of the international Kant's Society. The article offers an overview of Russian authors' publications in Kant-Studien in 1896—1933. 1. Архимандрит Антоний (Храповицкий). Моральное обоснование важнейшей христианской догмы» // Теологический журнал. 1894. № 3. С. 423—445. 2. Беседа с Хансом-Георгом Гадамером. Русские в...

This article defines the way of interaction between formal and transcendental logic through introducing ontological considerations based on P. Strawson's descriptive metaphysics. The notions of a particular, a sortal universal and a feature universal are introduced into the transcendental limitation on the inferences of formal logic. 1. Аристотель. Категории // Аристотель. Соч.: в 4 т. М., 1978. Т. 2. С. 53—90. 2. Брюшинкин В. Н. Взаимодействие формальной и трансцендентальной логики // Кантовский...

1. Асмус В. Ф. Религиозно-философские трактаты Л. Н. Толстого // Толстой Л. Н. Полн. собр. соч. Репринт. воспроизведение изд. 1928—1958 гг. М., 1992. Т. 23. С. V—XXXI. 2. Бердяев Н. А. Русская идея // Вопросы философии. 1990. № 2. С. 87—154. 3. Бердяев Н. А. Новое Средневековье. Размышление о судьбе России и Европы // Философия творчества, культуры и искусства : в 2 т. М., 1994. Т. 1. С. 406—464. 4. Булгаков С. Н. Свет невечерний. М., 1994. 5. Гадамер Х.-Г. Истина и метод. Основы философской герменевтики...

The article broaches the issue of Kant’s claim of the enlightenment of the philosophizing subject by tracing his criticism of philosophical enthusiasm (“Schwärmerei”). For Kant intellectual intuition (“intellektuelle Anschauung”) serves in case of philosophical enthusiasm as a reason for the justification of philosophical knowledge. This determination is a threat for his project of enlightenment, because it entices the philosophizing subject to contradict the maxim of self-thinking. In order to show...

My article is devoted to one of the main concepts of early modern natural law, i. e. the concept of obligation. Starting with Pufendorf's concept of obligation, it will be demonstrated that the natural law is grounded on the will of God. In contrast, the concept of obligation in Christian Wolff's Philosophia practica universalis has no need to found the validity of obligation of natural law in God's will. Instead he developed a concept which was based on the idea of a free self-binding moral subject...

The paper focuses on the problem of anthropodicy in the philosophical system of Hermann Cohen and its interpretation by Jacob Gordin (1896—1947). Gordin was one of the last followers of Cohen in Russia. He developes his interpretation in the lecture “Anthropodicy”, which was given in the Philosophical Circle at the Petrograd University in December 1921. For the study of the problem of anthropodicy he was apparently inspired by the discussions at the Free Philosophical Association in 1919—1921. Gordin...

Kant scholars have rarely addressed the notion of optimism as it was interpreted by the Königsbergian philosopher in the mid-18th century. The notion originates from Leibniz’s Theodi­cy and from debates over whether the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. The first of a two-part series, this article studies the historical context in which appeared Kant’s 1759 lecture advertisement leaflet entitled An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism. The study describes the requirements of the...

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 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...

Debates over Kant’s famous postulate about the existence of synthetic a priori judgements in mathematics, formulated in the Critique of Pure Reason, have been raging for over two centuries. On the one hand, it was fiercely criticised by neo-positivists in the early 20th century. On the other hand, Kant’s ideas on constructive nature of mathematics served as a philosophical framework for LEJ Brouwer’s programme of intuitionism in the foundations of mathematics. Of interest are the ideas of the great...

This article considers early Schopenhauer’s polemic against Kant's epistemology and views on the objectives and methods of philosophy. The crucial influence of this polemic and Kant’s works on the development of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is stressed. The author investigates Schopenhauer’s reception of the above aspects of Kant’s philosophy in 1811—1813 and its later evolution. For this purpose, the author addresses Schopenhauer’s manuscripts (early philosophical aphorisms and comments and marginal...

This article considers H.-G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the context of Kant’s aesthetic theory laid down in the Critique of Judgement. Kant facilitated the development of aesthetics as an independent science, for the first time addressing the problem of the cognising and perceiving subject. Gadamer, a prominent 20th century philosopher, builds his aesthetic concept based on Kant’s theory. However, their theories differ in some aspects. This article is an attempt to establish the connection between...

This article concludes the analysis of systematicity of the Critique of Pure Reason — the work that underlies the entire system created by the great Königsberg philosopher. The author considers the role of transcendental dialectic (it accounts for more than half of the book) in Kant’s methodology of science and the system of criticism. In the context of traditional epistemological theories, it was an entirely new instalment supplementing these theories and understanding knowledge as a continuous...

This paper deals with the methodological and ontological significance of transcendentalism. The author advocates the understanding of transcendental philosophy as ontology and presents a critique of the interpretation given by David Carr, who attached a merely methodological significance to the concept of the ‘transcendental’. Within this interpretation, this paper considers the problem of differences between the ontological aspects of Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology...