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Kant and the Crusians in the Debate on Optimism
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...
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Kant and the Problem of Optimism: The Origin of the Debate
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...
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The principle of sufficient reason in German philosophy of the Enlight-enment
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...
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Knowing humanity without knowing the human being: The structure of polemic in Kant’s political argumentation
Kant’s treatises on political problems form a loosely structured text corpus. However, due to its passionate polemic, it can be rewritten in the form of dialogues. The most dramatic instalment is the authoritative treatise Toward Perpetual Peace, which is full of memorable 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...
