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Kant’s mourning letter or necrology for his student Johann Friedrich von Funk (1760) has hardly been received. This study attempts to change this by explaining the contexts of the short missive. In the first part this concerns in particular the influence that Gottsched exerted on the style of such printed speeches or necrolo­gies. Kant’s references therefore to the ‘Royal German Society’ in Königsberg and its founder Flottwell, a friend of Gottsched’s, are described. The influence of the Roman Stoa...

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 logical...

The article provides, for the first time in the philosophical literature, a general description of the Konigsberg Kant studies as a special local direction in the history of philosophy. Core activities in this direction formed the Society of Kant’s Friends, as well as "archival Kant studies" — the work of collecting, annotating and publishing the manuscript heritage, correspondence and lecture notes Kant. Given the large volume of primary and secondary sources, we propose a variant ofspecification...

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...

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 analyzing...

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...

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 delight...

Outside the view of historians of Russian philosophy there are still unpublished materials that can illuminate unknown aspects of the reception of Kant’s philosophy in Russia. One piece of such material, which is published in the appendix to this article, was found in the archive of B. V. Nikolsky, where it is titled “Article by S.V. on the Occasion of the Centenary of Immanuel Kant’s Death. 1904”. It is devoted to Kant’s philosophy of law, the origins of which are traced back to the French Revolution...

The first part of the article describes general development of Kant studies in Königsberg as a local movement (not a school) with some special traits, which has significantly contributed to the culture of the town. Core activities were formed by the Society of Kant’s Friends, as well as by archival studies, i. e. collecting, annotating and publishing Kant’s manuscripts, correspondence, and lecture notes. In view of primary and secondary sources we would suggest to structure this movement in four...

The originality of Kant’s answer to the question of the Enlightenment in a 1784 article consisted not in addressing the words of Horace, which was commonplace in Germany of the time, 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...

The archive of Gustav Shpet contains scattered preparatory materials for his works. Some of these handwritten rough drafts are devoted to Immanuel Kant. These jottings enable us to take a new look at possible trajectories of philosophical anthropology. The main goal of this article is to show, on the one hand, the modern relevance of Kant’s reflections on the essence of the human being and, on the other hand, the productiveness of their critical reinterpretation by Shpet. In effect, Kant’s reflections...

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, Kant’s...

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 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 communication became a tradition in Königsberg in the 17th/18th centuries. This tradition created a sub-system of creative communication and leisure bringing together both nobility and aristocracy and ordinary curious citizens...

The formation of science and its separation from metaphysics are among the key characteristics of the early modern period. This separation faces a particular problem with conceptualization of body, which, while being a physical body, is closely bound up with spirit. Different ways of explaining the interaction between mind and body form a complex tradition, which has significantly influenced Kant’s pre-Critical writings. Reducing that crucial distinction between two substances to the empirical sphere...

The following is a review of the Fifth International Summer School for Young Scholars and Students, held on the eve of the tercentenary of Kant’s birth, and devoted to the question of the relevance of his philosophical ideas for understanding and solving the problems that confront humankind in the twenty-first century. The event was organized by the Academia Kantiana of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, with the support of the RF Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Petersburg...

The topics of this issue, devoted to the tercentenary of Immanuel Kant’s birth, focus on his practical philosophy, most notably on the problems of free will in the light of the debates at the end of the eighteenth century; on the concept of human dignity and its reflection in daily life and in the main legal documents of the Russian Federation; on the possibility of deriving positive duties from the categorical imperative; and on the relevance of Kantian ethics to modern-day realities. The issue...

This paper is concerned with the principles of adjudication (diiudicatio, Beurteilung) and execution (executio, Ausübung) in the notes of Kant’s lectures on natural right (“Feyerbend’s Natural Right”). In this manuscript these principles are used as a binary scheme twice, each time in the introduction to the first chapter. To explain the meaning of these concepts I use other cases of their use in Kant’s philosophy. I have established that they are used as a pair only in the notes of various lecture...

In this second installment (for the first, see Kantian Journal, 2024, vol. 43, no. 2), Kant’s references to ancient consolation writings are elaborated. The general aim is to make Kant’s proximity to the Roman Stoa, and his borrowings from it, more apparent. A comparison with his necrology for Funk then shows more explicitly how Kant takes up this ancient philosophy anew for his time, and for his fellow human beings. In so doing, he continued a trend that had begun in the Enlightenment. In Universal...

In his book Appearance and Sense Gustav Shpet, comparing Immanuel Kant’s transcendental logic with the traditional probleтs of the philosophy of language, thought it appropriate and conceptually effective to turn to the medieval scholastic debate on universals. Later, in the Hermeneutics and Its Problems, he goes back to this discussion and notes that it was the framework in which the thirteenth-century tradition of “terminist” logic was formed. Shpet attributed the fruitfulness of this approach...

The review covers scholarly publications devoted to the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, the head of the Marburg School of Neo­Kantianism, written by Russ­ ian researchers in the period between 2000 and 2023. Although Cohen commanded unquestioned authorityamong Russian philosophers of his time — among them some followers and pupils — there was no systematic and substantive study of his work in pre­revolutionary Russia. The review below attempts to show the evidentgrowth of interest in Cohen’s philosophy...

... the issues related to Kant­ian philosophy, appearing in the works of Deleuze — from a course of lectures on the problem of grounds, given by the young Deleuze at the Lyceum Louis the Great in Paris, to his last article published in his lifetime, “Immanence: A Life”, in which Deleuze brings up the question of the transcendental field. Despite the fact that Kant and Deleuze are more often contrasted than considered as possible allies, and despite the cases of criticisms of Kant by Deleuze, I defend ...

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...

I show that Kant’s depiction of the christic figure in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is not contingent but explains how this figure functions in two essential ways: as a representation of a maximum of morality that can ground our moral disposition and in so doing acts as a stan­dard for morality. More precisely, the following argument is made: 1) the sublime nature of the image of Christ — as an image of universal respect for the law — awakens the moral feeling of subjects in the...

November 15—16, 2018 Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia The Academia Kantiana at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University organizes a series of conferences on the theme of “Immanuel Kant and Russian Philo­sophers: Convergences and Divergences.” The first conference, co-organized with the Department of the History of Russian Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, is devoted to the reception and criticism of the philosophy of Immanuel...

This article is the second part of the research concerning the publications of Russian scholars in Kant-Studien, the leading periodical dedicated to Kantian studies and the most important print of International Kant Society. The article describes the history of publications of Russian authors from 1974 to 2008. 1. Асмус В. Ф. Диалектический материализм и логика. Очерк развития диалектического метода в новейшей философии от Канта до Ленина. Киев, 1924. 2. Асмус В. Ф. Диалектика Канта. М., 1929...

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 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...

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...

“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...

]his article analyses the circumstances that resulted in the situation when the review of J. A. H. Ulrich’s eleutheriology, which would be published today as a work co-authored by I. Kant and Chr. J. Kraus, was first published under the name of the philosopher’s friend and student and later in collections of Kant’s works.It is shown that the review criticises the naturalism of Unlrich’s theory of freedom and stresses the major reason behind its failure, namely, that its author did not distinguish...

This essay concerns an unusual note of Kant’s that has been available in Hamburg since the 1920s but otherwise neglected in the Kant literature. This small 8 x 6.3 cm sheet belonged to the manuscript collector Oskar Ulex (1852—1934), who appears to have bought it from a dealer in France. Writing covers both sides of the sheet, with moral theology discussed on one side, and the cosmological proof on the other. A transcription and description of the sheet is provided, followedby a “Question & Answer”...