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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...

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...

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...

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...

Are computers on the way to acquiring “superintelligence”? Can human deliberation and decision-making be fully simulated by the mechanical execution of AI programmes? On close examination these expectations turn out not to be well-founded, since algorithms (or, in Kantian terms, “imperatives of skill” that are implemented by technological means) do, ultimately, have “heteronomous” characteristics. So-called AI-“autonomy” is a sensor-directed performance automatism, which — compared with the potential...

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...

The third formulation of the Categorical Imperative rarely receives the attention devoted to its predecessors. This paper aims to develop a naturalistic approach to morality inspired by Kant’s conception of moral agents as legislating in a Kingdom of Ends. Positions derived from the third formulation, John Rawls’s Kantian Constructivism and T. M. Scanlon’s Contractualism, cleave closely to Kant in idealising the process of legislation. For Rawls, the citizens of the Kantian Reich can be reduced to...

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’s ‘Newtonianism’ has been rightly highlighted by figures like Friedman. The follow-up debates led to a more adequate view on Kant’s natural philosophy and in particular his relation towards Newton. But the discussion that evolved did not point to the asynchronicity that takes place in Kant’s struggle with the central Newtonian concepts. Newtonian space and gravity, in revised form, are of central concern to Kant’s critical philosophy. But Kant adapted and re-evaluated these two concepts in an...

The cultural movement known as “humanism” has unfortunately not received a clear and careful definition. Historians and philosophers have lumped together their various understandings of outlooks that stress the value and importance of human life under the collective term “humanism.” This essay sets out to contrast, in particular, three types of humanism, all of which attracted attention at overlapping times in Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union. The youngest of the three, Marxist humanism...

My aim is to prove that Hermann Cohen was not only a philosopher of dialogue but has played an exceedingly important role in the history of that current of thought. His books Ethics of Pure Will (1904) and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (1919) offer a detailed analysis of the relationships between I and Thou, I and It, I and We. In the first book these relationships are considered from the ethical-legal point of view and in the second from the viewpoint of religious anthropology...

In a crucial paragraph (KrV, A 663-664 / B 691-692) of the first part of the “Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic”, Kant discusses the specific status of the principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity. In doing so, he refers to an already proven argument and thus to other passages of the Critique of Pure Reason. In search of this argument the “Transcendental Analytic” but in particular the “first book” of the “Transcendental Dialectic” turn out to be possible reference points....

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...

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...

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...

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...

The period between the late 1910s and early 1920s saw the emergence of onto-epistemological philosophical projects in Russia that was determined by criticism and attempts to overcome the domination of epistemology in philosophy which was the result of the intensive development of Neo-Kantianism and the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology. Attempts to turn towards ontology were made both by Russian religious philosophers and by Russian Neo-Kantians. I look at the little-studied philosophical projects...

1. Belov, V. N., 2013. A. I. Vvedneksy, the Forefather of Russian Neo-Kantianism. In: V. N. Bryushinkin, V. S. Popova, eds. 2013. Neo-Kantianstvo v Rossii: Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky, Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin [Neo-Kantianism in Russia: Aleksandr I. Vvedensky, Ivan I. Lapshin]. Moscow: ROSSPEN, pp. 74-93. (In Russ.) 2. Belov, V. N., Czardybon, B., 2016. Studies into the History of Russian Neo-Kantianism in Poland. Kantovsky sbornik [Kant­ian Journal], 1, pp. 66-86. (In Russ.) 3. Czardybon, B., 2015...

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...

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...

The concepts of style and topos in their cultural studies interpretation by Yu. V. Rozhdestvensky are applied to the analysis of some fragments of N. O. Lossky's philosophical concept pertaining to the features of Russian culture in general and the originality of Russian philosophy in particular. The topic is developed through comparative digressions into the field of anthropological aspects of I. Kant's philosophy. 1. Брюшинкин В. Н. Сравнительное исследование западноевропейской и русской философии...

This article considers the key aspects of the development of contemporary Russian Kant studies and, in particular, the role of Vladimir Zhuchkov in it. 1. Васильев В. В. История философской психологии. Западная Европа — XVIII век. Калининград, 2003. 2. Васильев В. В. Учение о душе в метафизике XVIII века. Барнаул, 2000. 3. Васильев В. В. Философская психология И. Н. Тетенса и современные мифы о соз­нании // Философия сознания: история и современность: материалы научной конфе­ренции, посвященной...

... quantitative (cumulative) and qualitative (paradigmatic) histo­rical changes. Considering the further fact that human ignorance has been acknowledged since Antiquity and taken for granted for millennia of human history, the awareness of this ignorance becomes parti­cularly problematic during the Enlightenment when irreducible yet systematically repressed elements of human ignorance were integrated into the epistemology of 18th-century rationalism. This article discusses the development in the shift from ignorance ...

The origin of science and the demarcation between science and metaphysics are the main features of early modern period. This demarcation faces a particular problem with conceptualisation of body, which can be considered both as just physical body and as closely bound up with spirit. Different ways of explaining the interaction between mind and body form the complex tradition, which significantly influenced Kant’s precritical writings. Limitation of the crucial distinction between these two substances...

This study attempts to interpret the process of self-knowledge of reason in the transcendental dialectic as a vital phenomena. In the transcendental dialectic, a thesis and antithesis arises from the division of reason, which can not happen in the death of reason. Dogmatism and skepticism, which had been derived from a division of reason, have formed the history of philosophy. The disputes between the thesis and the antithesis, or the dogmatism and skepticism could be regarded as a battlefields or...

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...

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...

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...

... phrases that used to excite the very first readers. Kant’s opponents are both concrete authors — either living or dead contemporaries (Garve, Mendesohn, Frederick the Great) — and generalised characters representing entire classes. The two opposing parties are Kant and his favourite philosophers (Saint-Pierre and Rousseau) against the ‘government’ and ‘lawyers’. Kant’s philosophy of law, which is believed to rest on a metaphysical foundation, is constructed using a minimum of anthropological ...

Many scholars and practitioners in the sphere of the public education and upbringing in Russia addressed themselves to the philosophical-pedagogical ideas of German philosopher of Neo- Kantian movement Paul Natorp. These ideas were formulated mainly in his fundamental work “Social Pedagogy”. Vladimir Dinze relies on Natorp’s thesis of the national school as the way of accustoming “the all people to the national culture”, actualizes the heritage of Russian and Western pedagogues and philosophers and...

This article analyses the historical and philosophical critique of A. I. Vvedensky’s ‘new psychophysiological’ law. The author examines the most substantial commentaries, namely, those by P. E. Astafyev, N. Y. Grot, L. M. Lopatin, E. L. Radlov, and S. N. Trubetskoy. At the end of the 19th century, these authors contributed to an active discussion in the pages of scientific journals. The discussion focused on the ideas expressed in the work On the Limits and Characteristics of Becoming Conscious,...

Many scholars and practitioners in the sphere of the public education and upbringing in Russia addressed themselves to the philosophical-pedagogical ideas of German philosopher of Neo- Kantian movement Paul Natorp. These ideas were formulated mainly in his fundamental work “Social Pedagogy”. Vladimir Dinze relies on Natorp’s thesis of the national school as the way of accustoming “the all people to the national culture”, actualizes the heritage of Russian and Western pedagogues and philosophers and...

This article considers the ideas of the Russian Neo-Kantianist Vasily Sesemann (1884—1963) in comparison with the idealism of the Marburg School. The author analyses the key Russian phi-losopher’s works on the topic: ‘The problem of idealism in philosophy’, ‘Theoretical philosophy of the Marburg School’, etc. The article focuses on Sesemann’s interest in the concept of the ‘irra¬tional’ and explains his understanding of Neo-Kantianism and the idea of infinity (fieri). Sesemann is interested in the...

This article revisits the ratio-centric system developed by the prominent exponent of the German enlightenment J. Chr. Gottsched (1700—1766). The authors examine the problem of the ontological argument in the context of the current civilizational crisis of consciousness, which arose against the background of the 20th century crisis of objectivist methodology of modern natural sciences. Such a methodology is incapable of solving the problem of an accurate description of the reality, in particular...

This article analyses the so-called chornosoteriology as viewed by Kristijonas Donelaitis and Kant. Special attention is paid to the differences between the ontological foundations of these soteriologies stemming from differences in the hermeneutic circles. The influence of pietism on the development of the hermeneutic principles is analysed in the works of both authors. An attempt is made at a partial revision of Donetlaitis’s and Kant’s chronosoteriological concepts in the context of modern global...

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...

The article deals with the jey areas of Russian Neo-Kantianism studies in Poland. Although the number and quality of studies on the history of Russian Neo-Kantianism cannot be equated to those on the history of German Neo-Kantianism, the situation is improving. The authors stress the undeniable progress in Russian Neo-Kantianism studies in Poland: monographs, articles, collections, and research projects dedicated to certain scholars or aspects of the history of Russian Neo-Kantianism have appeared...

The legends about dinner parties of Immanuel Kant’s friends have been known since the times of his first biographers and other contemporaries. However, there were other communities of friends in Königsberg. Gathering friends at a dining table for the purpose of intellectual ...

... present in himself and of renouncing, out of his inborn magnanimity, all claims to unlimited dominance. It is the combination of both characters that, according to Fichte, provides the only effective incitement to moral education and exaltation of both parties in a family union. 1. Кант И. Антропология с прагматической точки зрения // Кант И. Соч. : в 6 т. М., 1966. Т. 6. С. 349—588. 2. Кант И. Метафизические начала ...

In his treatise On General Speculative Philosophy, J. N. Tetens sets out to justify the possibility and necessity of metaphysics as a general speculative science. His primary objective is to defend metaphysics against the opponents, the most serious of which, in Tetens’s opinion, is D. Hume. In this connection, Tetens sharply criticises traditional empiricism and develops a new perspective on experience and the bases of its certainty. The main target of his critique is ‘popular philosophy’, which...

“Lectures on Poelitz’s philosophical theory of religion” are one of the four surviving manuscripts of Kant’s lectures on rational theology. The Lectures include an introduction, two parts, and an appendix. The introduction contains an overview of the basic questions and problems of rational theology, namely: the concept of theology, arts of natural theology, the idea of highest essence, possible types of arguments for the existent of God and their limitations etc. The first part is called “Transcendental...

Necessity is a key philosophical notion, which is used in different disciplines from logic to ontology. In the German philosophy of the Enlightenment, this concept was centralto the work of many thinkers. For them, necessity is related not only to logic but rather to the disciplines of general and special metaphysics. It is explained by that the principle of sufficient reason introduced by Leibniz is closely linked to the notion underconsideration. The recognition of this principle as one of the...

This article considers the circumstances of the appearance of Kant’s remarks on the last book of M. Mendelssohn Morgenstunden… in relation to its analysis in L. G. von Jakob’s work. It is explained why Kant had to participate in debates with his opponents, despite the resolution to avoid them and concentrate on constructing a consistent and thus solid and effective system of philosophy. The significance of Kant’s small polemic works lies in that they explain the key elements of his system. Due to...

A thorough analysis of the structure of the treatise constituting the first Critique and its comparison with the analogous structure of the second and third Critiques show that the Critique of Pure Reason lacks such an important element as the antinomy of pure theoretical reason. Of course, it is implied in the text: Kant’s reasoning is based on it and takes it into account. However, it is not explicitly expressed. Instead of this crucial structural element, which would significantly simplify the...

By the end of the 19th century, after three partitions of Rzeczpospolita by the neighbouring powers, about half of its territory became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. These geopolitical changes had significant social implications for the Polish population.Jan Swiecicki was one of many Polish students to be sent to German-speaking gymnasia. Some of them continued their education at the oldest Prussian university, the Albertina. Selected pas¬sages from letters dated 1802—1806 give an idea of the organisation...

Cassirer’s critique of Russell’s philosophy of mathematics and the Neo-Kantian philosophy of science and mathematics as a whole is of special relevance in the context of modern mathematics and mathematical physics. The fact that the modern standard axiomatic architecture of mathematical theories does not take into account the object-based character of mathematical knowledge, which was stressed after Kant by Cassirer, complicates the application of new mathematical theories in natural sciences and...

This article focuses on the relation between the subject and object in theory of cognition. Special attention is paid to the role of social communication in the construction of the real world. The author stresses that the language communication plays an important role in this process. Thereby, it affects human cognition as well as all existence. When discussing this phenomenon, the author uses the methodology that was symbolically described by Kant as the Copernican turn. Wilhelm von Humboldt was...

This article deals with one of the most elegant and non-standard versions of the modal onto-logical argument for God’s existence, which was proposed by the analytic philosopher Stephen Makin in 1988. He managed to avoid the famous criticism of Kant concerning the impossibility of acknowledging the predicate ‘to exist’ as real. Makin’s argument is not based on proving the presence of necessarily exemplified concepts rather than the necessary existing object. He argues that there is at least one (and...

In the 18th century, a philosophical dispute over the Principle of sufficient reason arose in Germany. Despite the fact that this Principe was explicitly formulated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz only at the end of the 17th century, a major dispute about it was triggered by Christian Wolff who had considerable influence on the German philosophy of Enlightenment. In German Metaphysic, he presented the “strong” definition of the principle and its proof. As a result, freedom was restricted, because the...

This article considers the understanding of natural law from the perspective of neo-Kantian legal philosophy of the late 19th/early 20th century and the problem of correlation between changing rules of law and the unchanged form of moral prescriptions.The author focuses on the development of Kantian approach in solving the problem of moral philosophy. The essence of morals is revealed not in the creation of ideal projects but rather in the need for action: the moral law must be implemented in the...