Immaturity and the objective of a true reform in ways of thinking. Part II
The originality of Kant’s answer to the question of the Enlightenment in a 1784 article consisted not in addressing the words of Horace, but in linking it to the revised legal notion of immaturity, which is now interpreted from the philosophical and theological perspective and has become one of key philosophical notions. However, Kant’s view is fraught with certain complications: firstly, it is dominated by negative characteristics; secondly, unlimited use of one’s understanding can lead to...
Kant’s Dissertation for the Master’s Degree On Fire and the Transformations of his Ideas of Ethereal Matter
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...
The Nature of Appearance in Kant’s Transcendentalism: A Seman- tico-Cognitive Analysis
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...
Pure and Impure Philosophy in Kant’s Metaphilosophy
Kant’s metaphilosophy has three main parts: (1) an essentialist project (“What is philosophy?”); (2) a methodological project (“How do we do philosophy?”); and (3) a taxonomic project (“What are the different parts of philosophy, and how are they related?”). This paper focuses on the third project. In particular, it explores one of the most intriguing yet puzzling aspects of Kant’s philosophy, viz. the relationship between what Kant calls ‘pure’ philosophy vs. ‘applied’, ‘empirical’...
Who is Rationalising? On an Overlooked Problem for Kant’s Moral Psychology and Method of Ethics
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...
Immanuel Kant’s House in Königsberg: Attempt at a 3D Reconstruction
The house which Immanuel Kant bought in Königsberg in 1783 has not survived, having been pulled down in the late nineteenth century. Likewise, hardly any of the great philosopher’s personal belongings have survived. Many pieces of furniture and household utensils were auctioned off after his death. So the Kant museum had few original exhibits from the Königsberg thinker’s house, and almost all these artefacts were lost during the Second World War. Today, digital technologies make it possible...
The Knight of Contemporary Russian Kantiana. On the 85th Birthday of Leonard Kalinnikov
This is a review of the main research achievements of Professor L. A. Kalinnikov presented in his articles and monographs. The theoretical issues of Kantianism considered in Kalinnikov’s works include the problem of cognisability of “the thing in itself” and noumenal affection, the character of systematicity in Kant’s philosophy and the methodology of its interpretation. Cycles of articles are devoted to the reception of Kant’s ideas in the philosophical and poetic work of V. S. Solovyov...
On the Role of Gesinnung in Kant’s Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. Part II
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...
Kant’s appearance as an objective-objectual [gegenständlich] representation
This article analyses the features of Kant’s [transcendental] philosophy, which Kant himself described as transcendental idealism. On the one hand, Kant’s transcendentalism rests on the distinction between things-in-themselves and appearances. On the other hand, our method of cognition is representative in that is based on representations — subjective and objective (objectual) ones. A synthesis of the above considerations suggests that Kant’s transcendentalism rests on the [conceptual] triad...
Why Kant’s “Ethical State” Might Prove Instrumental in Challenging Current Social Pathologies
As recent social research demonstrates, the life world is increasingly impacted by a corrosion of social bonds and aggressive habits expressed, for instance, in hate speech in the social media. Significantly, such phenomena have not been prevented from evolving within the framework of constitutional liberal states. In search of an appropriate mode of challenging the current social pathologies, we should examine Kant’s claim that, alongside the “juridico-civil (political) state”, an “ethico-civil...
The Problem of the Relationship between Apperception, Self-Consciousness and Consciousness in Kant’s Critical Philosophy
Kant does not provide clear-cut definitions of apperception, consciousness, and self-consciousness and everywhere uses these terms as synonyms, which creates the problem of the relationship between these faculties. The importance of this problem stems from the colossal significance of each of the above-mentioned faculties which are intimately connected with Kant’s formulation of the key tasks of transcendental philosophy. The prime task is to discover the categories of understanding and to prove...
A transcendental analysis of mathematics: The abstract nature of mathematical knowledge
Kant’s transcendental philosophy (transcendentalism) focuses on both the human method of cognition in general [CPR, B25] 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, A713/В...
Kant’s transcendentalism as a transcendental paradigm of philo¬so¬phiz¬ing
This paper considers Kant’s transcendental philosophy as a special transcendental paradigm (a special type of philosophical research) differing from both the "objective" metaphysics of Antiquity and the "subjective" metaphysics of Modernity (the metaphysics of an object (transcendent metaphysics; meta—physics) — experience (transcendental metaphysics) — the metaphysics of the subject (immanent metaphysics; meta—psychology)). For this purpose, the author introduces suchnew...
Analytic Work on Kant — Idealism, Things in Themselves, and the Object of Knowledge
The article sketches the development of Kant interpretation in analytic philosophy. The author turns to Kant’s transcendental idealism and three well-known difficulties about things in themselves which Kant’s idealism generates: problems about unknowability, noumenal-affection and category-application, and the neglected-alternative. Building on the work “Things in Themselves: an Interim Report” (XI Kant Readings, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, 2014), the author questions...
Kant on evil in the human nature
This article focuses on the analysis of the problem of evil in Kant’s works. The author attempts at reconstructing the key stages of Kant’s logic of ethics and, on this basis, reconstructs his idea of evil. Of special importance is the analysis and criticism of the anthropology-focused study of the sources of good and evil in the work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The author sees the key to understanding Kant’s approach to the problem of evil in the differentiation of the levels...
Semantic and Stylistic Features of Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime: The Art of Seeing and Describing an Object
Immanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime is examined in the context of the emergence of the epistemological practice of scientific observation. By focusing on the genre-stylistic and semantic-structural features of the text the authors demonstrate the mechanisms of observation as well as the methods of describing the results characteristic of mid-eighteenth century science. The authors consider Kant’s treatise to be a hybrid text: on the one hand, it attests...
Kant and medicine
Immanuel Kant never considered the problems of medicine as a science in his works, however, his critical philosophy became highly influential in the late 18th century as to the issues of medical theory. The German physician and philosopher Johann Benjamin Erhard was first to address the theoretical status of contemporary medicine based on Kant’s critical foundations of science and arguments for the possibility of a philosophy of nature for the purpose of justifying medicine as a science. After...
The Boundaries of Ecological Ethics: Kant’s Philosophy in Dialog with the “End of Human Exclusiveness” Thesis
The developers of ecological ethics claim that the rationale of anthropocentrism is false. Its main message is that natural complexes and resources exist to be useful to the human being who sees them only from the perspective of using them and does not take into account their intrinsic value. Kant’s anthropocentric teaching argues that the instrumental attitude to nature has its limits. These limits are hard to determine because the anthropocentrists claim that the human being is above nature....
Kant and His Heritage in Belarusian Philosophy of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods
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...
On the Role of Gesinnung in Kant’s Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. Part I
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...
Transcendental Philosophy as a Scientific Research Programme
Transcendental philosophy was not born like Athena out of Zeus’s head, mature and in full armour from the very beginning. 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...
Is Spinoza’s Ethics Heteronomous in the Kantian Sense of the Term?
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...
Deduction of Freedom vs Deduction of Experience in Kant’s Metaphysics
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. Kant in the development of N. O. Lossky’s philosophical views: The case of a translation
This article considers the development of N. O. Lossky’s concept of intuitivism in the context of the translation of Kant’s works and revision of Kant’s epistemology. The development of Lossky as an independent philosopher required overcoming Kant’s scepticism, which was not consistent with the ideal-realist’s belief in the cognoscibility of transsubjective world given us in the original. The means necessary to overcome it determined the key characteristics of the new system of intuitivism...
Reclaiming the “Cultural Mandate”: The Idea of Sustainable Development in the Kantian Perspective
In the Club of Rome report Come on! Capitalism, Short-Termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet (2018) Kant, along with other “old” Enlighteners, is presented as the father of a world-view which led to the destabilisation of the environment in which humanity exists. The authors of the report argue that the “old Enlightenment” with its individualism, faith in the market and a consumerist attitude to nature should be scrapped. I maintain that this assessment of Kant’s philosophy...
Kant as the German Theorist of the French Revolution: the Origin of a Dogma
The origins in Marxist-Leninist philosophy of the dogma about Kant as the German theorist of the French Revolution requires some analysis and I explain how a phrase of Marx later gave rise to the dogma. I first look at the sources that influenced K. Marx’s view of Kant and the French Revolution, above all С. F. Bachmann and H. Heine. I then examine the form in which Kant’s philosophy was compared with the French Revolution in the non-Bolshevik milieu before the 1917 Russian Revolution (P. Ya...
Breakthrough in Chinese Kant Scholarship. Interview with Prof. Deng Xiaomang
Prof. Deng Xiaomang’s translations of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (2002), the Critique of Practical Reason (2003), and the Critique of Pure Reason (2004), were the first Chinese editions of Kant’s three Critiques translated in their entirety from the German originals. This interview tracks his scholarship, placing it within the broader scope of historical and contemporary Kant scholarship in China. Among the topics addressed, the reception of Kantian philosophy among the so called “New...
Moral inscrutability and self-constitution in Kant (translated from the English by V. Belonogova and D. Khizanishvili, edited by V. Chaly)
This article analyses the system of inferences used by Kant in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason to demonstrate the existence of evil disposition (Gesinnung). The author be¬lieves that, in this work, Kant introduces two innovations in respect of the fundamental project presented in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. He emphasises that freedom is not justified and postulates a transcendental structure similar to the unity of transcendental apperception in order to unify all...
Kant’s lectures on natural law: Justice and conscientiousness
The lectures on natural law delivered by Kant in the winter semester of 1784/85 have recently attracted increasing attention from Kant scholars. Dating back to the 1780s, they elucidate a number of important aspects in the genesis of Kant’s practical philosophy. Firstly, this relates to the formation of the Königsberg philosopher’s views on law. However, the lecture notes (especially the introduction) are of equal importance to understanding certain problems of Kant’s ethical concept and interpretation...
Spontaneities and Singularities: Kant’s Hypothetical Approach to the Supersensible and the Re-Foundation of Metaphysics
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...
Analytical Kant studies, transcendental idealism, and the thing in itself
In modern theoretical analytical philosophy, the interest in Kant is primarily due to discussions on the nature of sensory perceptions, on the epistemological status of experience, and on the so-called ‘constructivism’. The conflict of interpretations goes so far that some consider Kant to be a conceptualist, while others consider him an anti-conceptualist. For some, he is an internalist and, for others, an externalist. For some, he is a constructivist and, for others is a realist. This paper...
‘Genuine criticism’: An unknown reception of Kant’s philosophy in early works of Schopenhauer
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...
The justification of legal punishment in Kant’s philosophy
The subject matter of the article is the problem of justification of punishment within Kant’s practical philosophy. Modern interpretations tend to reduce this problem to the issue of “retributivism”: To what extent is Kant’s theory of punishment to be regarded as retributivist? While acknowledging the significance of this question the author stresses a more fundamental one lying behind it: Is a non-contradictory theory of punishment conceivable at all within Kant’s philosophy? It is demonstrated...
Duty and Coercion in Kant’s Republican Cosmopolitanism
This paper argues whether Kant’s cosmopolitanism entails a specific theory of coercion. I will especially tackle Kant’s account of international political order. First, I claim that Kant attributes a systematic role to the cosmopolitan right, what justifies considering this part of the doctrine of law as a necessary rational conclusion of the legal system, although its institutional embodiment differs from that required by the rights of states. I highlight that according to Kant states may not...
A Relation to the Politikal Revolution as a Touchstone for Practical Philosophy
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...
On Kant’s Remarks on Ludwig Heinrich Jakob's Examination of Men-delssohn's Morgenstunden (preface to the publication)
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...
Between Kant and Trendelenburg: On the Genealogy of Kudryavtsev-Platonov’s Theory of Cognition
Viktor D. Kudryavtsev-Platonov is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian religious-academic philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century whose theory of cognition bears an imprint of the Kantian theoretical philosophy. Kudryavtsev was not only thoroughly familiar with the Königsberg thinker’s work, but offered a critically reinterpreted version of Kant’s teaching on space, time and categories of understanding. But was the Russian philosopher original in his reading and...
Feyerabend’s Natural Law Notes and their significance for Kant studies. Preface
Natural Law Notes of Feyerabend is one of the most important sources by the research of ethical and juridical views of Kant. Dating back to 1784 they distinctly demonstrate that the basic principles of Kant’s philosophy of right are not a late production of the philosopher, but they have been formed already in the middle of 80’s of 18th century. Therewith we can use this lectures notes for the studies of Kant’s moral philosophy too, because of their closeness to the Foundations of Metaphysics...
Donelaitis and Kant: to the issue of the hermeneutic of survival in the era of the “mystery of iniquity”
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...
Reception of Kant’s Epistemological Ideas in Fyodor Golubinsky’s Metaphysics
Kant’s views on space and time as well as his doctrine of the categories of understanding attracted the attention of thinkers belonging to the Russian spiritual-academic philosophical tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A prominent representative of these was Fyodor Golubinsky. He was among the first to react to Kant’s “Copernican turn”. He did not merely study the epistemological ideas of Kant but embraced them and modified them in the framework of his own philosophical...
Kant’s philosophical system and the principles of its interpretation
Kant’s philosophical system has had a strange history: from the moment of its inception, it exhibited critical contradictions; however, later, it was demonstrated that the contradictions existed not in the system of the Königsberg philosopher, but rather in the mind of the interpreter, and the system proved to be even more solid than before. This process has taken more than two centuries and seems to be endless. It is akin to a rock that waves break against and then recede falling into myriads...
Watershed or Cul-de-Sac? Disputes in the Theological Reception of Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s turn to the subject has changed the epistemological conditions for theology. Four intellectual backgrounds of objections are examined: an Aristotelian and Thomistic teleological order of nature (1); Augustinianism based on original sin in which human agency is completely attributed to God’s grace (2); a Hegelian critique of the deontological conception of an “unconditional ought” which also puts Kant’s postulate of the existence of God into question (3); the combination in Radical...
Kantian Philosophy and ‘Linguistic Kantianism’
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...
The Ethics of the Categorical Imperative. Lossky under the Influence of Kant
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...
Family ethics and philosophy of love in Kant’s Lectures on Ethics
This article considers Kant’s deliberations on the essence and varieties of human love, based on the Lectures on Ethics. Kant distinguished between the love of benevolence (ethical love) — a commitment to the other’s wellbeing (discussed in Kant’s other ethical writings) — and a love of delight (aesthetical love), further divided into the sensual and intellectual love. The sensual love of delight is identified with sexual love. The intellectual love of delight eludes definition, since such...
Kant between liberalism and conservatism
Kant has a reputation of one of the chief proponents of political liberalism. However, some of his important ideas can qualify as conservative. Their consequences are reaching far enough to sug¬gest a reevaluation of Kant as an unconditional liberal. Kant's generally liberal understanding of aims and values of a political process (which is, however, quite remote from the pluralism and individualism of some contemporary theories) is balanced by his reservations concerning the prospects of their realization...
The Problem of Being: Kant and Heidegger
My task is to demonstrate substantial differences in the views of Kant and Heidegger on being. To this end I analyse Heidegger’s work Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics which Heidegger was writing intermittently during the period from 1927 to 1964. It deals not only with the ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason but also with Kant’s pre-critical work, The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), in which Kant explicitly addressed the question of being...
Inadvisable Concession: Kant’s Critique of the Political Philosophy of Christian Garve
The starting point of my study is Kant’s remark to the effect that Garve in his treatise on the connection between morality and politics presents arguments in defence of unjust principles. Recognition of these principles is, according to Kant, an inadvisable concession to those who are inclined to abuse it. I interpret this judgement by making a detailed comparison of the texts of the two treatises. I demonstrate that Garve’s work is an eclectic attempt to combine in one concept the lessons of...
Kant’s cryptic notes (Afterword to publication)
1. Васильев В. В. «Маргинальная» метафизика Канта // Логос. 1997. № 10. С. 100—107.
2. Гегель Г. В. Ф. Письма 1793—1831 // Гегель Г. В. Ф. Работы разных лет : в 2 т. М.,1971. Т. 2.
3. Гюйгенс Х. О движении тел под влиянием удара // Голин Г. М., Филонович С. Р. Классики физической науки (с древнейших времен до...
Maimon’s critique of I. Kant’s theory of analytic judge-ments
The article deals with Maimon’s critical reinterpretation of Kant’s theory of analytic judgments. Maimon contributed to the history of the German Idealism primarily through his criticism of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, which largely predetermined some ideas of Fichte and later exerted a certain influence on the thinkers of some very different schools (from Marburg Neo-Kantianism to Deleuze). Maimon’s attitude toward Kant’s views on the nature of analytic judgments underwent an essential...