7 research outputs found
Ontology as Transcendental Philosophy
How does the critical Kant view ontology? There is no shared scholarly answer to this question. Norbert Hinske sees in the Critique of Pure Reason a âfarewell to ontology,â albeit one that took Kant long to bid (Hinske 2009). Karl Ameriks has found evidence in Kantâs metaphysics lectures from the critical period that he âwas unwilling to break away fully from traditional ontologyâ (Ameriks 1992: 272). Gualtiero Lorini argues that a decisive break with the tradition of ontology is essential to Kantâs critical reform of metaphysics, as is reflected in his shift from âontologyâ to âtranscendental philosophy,â two notions that Lorini takes to be related by mere âanalogyâ (Lorini 2015).
I agree with Lorini that a thorough reform of ontology is a pivotal part of Kantâs critical plan for metaphysics and that ontology somehow âsurvives within the critical philosophyâ (Lorini 2015: 76). To make this case, however, I deem it important to identify âontologyâ and âtranscendental philosophyâ in the sense of extensional equivalence. While we can detect this identification in Kantâs writings, only from his metaphysics lectures can we get a full sense of its historical and philosophical significance. In this chapter I focus on how it represents a definitive turn from as well as notable continuity with traditional treatments of ontology, particularly the Wolffian one
A Guide to Ground in Kant's Lectures on Metaphysics
While scholars have extensively discussed Kantâs treatment of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in the Antinomies chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, and, more recently, his relation to German rationalist debates about it, relatively little
has been said about the exact notion of ground that figures in the PSG.
My aim in this chapter is to explain Kantâs discussion of ground in the
lectures and to relate it, where appropriate, to his published discussions of
ground
Zapora izkustva
Kant ends traditional epistemology and founds the aesthetic approach. He does so by working on the distinction between representation and object. Kant denies the separatability of representation and its object. Representation and object are not separable because one cannot have an object without an representation. Kant, thus interpreted, comes very close to Goodman. Just as the object depends on the appearance, the world depends - according to Goodman â on the version. Not any version, but only true (or right) versions make worlds, is Goodman's thesis. Not imagined intuitions, but only empirical intuitions, that is, appearances, make objects, is Kant's point. Both hold that we are operating within intuitions or versions respectively. This is the closure of experience.Kant zakljuÄi tradicionalno epistemologijo ter utemelji estetiĆĄki pristop. To stori z razdelavo razlikovanja med reprezentacijo in objektom. Kant zanika loÄljivost reprezentacije in njenega objekta. Reprezentacija in objekt nista loÄljiva, ker ne moremo imeti objekta brez reprezentacije. Ce Kanta interpretiramo na tak naÄin, ga zelo pribliĆŸamo Goodmanu. Tako kot je objekt odvisen od videza, tako je svet - po Goodmanu - odvisen od verzije. Goodmanova teza je, da le resniÄne (ali prave) verzije, in ne katerekoli, tvorijo svet. Po Kantu le empiriÄne intuicije, se pravi videzi, tvorijo objekte - ne pa zamiĆĄljene intuicije. Oba trdita, da delujemo znotraj intuicij ali ustreznih verzij. To je zapora izkustva
Intuition and nature in Kant and Goethe
This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kantâs system. Part one develops Kantâs attitude toward intuition in order to understand how âsensible intuitionâ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an âintellectual intuitionâ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kantâs epistemic achievement and what were taken to be the outstanding problems of freedomâs relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to âintellectual intuitionâ. Part three begins with Kantâs subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goetheâs contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself
From anthropology to rational psychology in Kantâs Lectures on Metaphysics
If one were to ask a specialist what Kant thought about rational psychology, their first point of reference would undoubtedly be to Kantâs well-known charges against this type of dogmatic reasoning in the Paralogisms section of the Critique of Pure Reason. Having spent the first half of the Critique on a description of the manner by which general metaphysics or âthe proud name of Ontologyâ must give way to a mere analysis of the understanding (A247/ B304), Kant had been determined in the second half of the Critique to expose the illusions at work in the âspecialâ metaphysics devoted to topics such as cosmology, the immortal soul or the existence of God. In the case of rational psychology, its doctrines regarding the soul were ultimately taken by Kant to be the result of a simple misunderstanding (B421). Namely, its practitioners, among whom Descartes certainly counted as themost famous, had mistaken a bare sense of the âI thinkâ â a sense responsible for our indexing the I to the unity, constancy and indeed recognizability of oneâs inner and outer perceptions â for the whole person, i.e. for not only the person of our constant inner experience, the person whose thoughts, memories and dreams defined us, but for the intelligible person of our moral life, the character whose choices bore the imprint of our immortal soul (B422, n.). This did not mean that there was no place for the latter considerations; on the contrary, Kant was clear regarding our rational need to believe in the soul, and on the practical benefits conveyed by humankindâs concern for it. Rational psychology, as he put it, prevents us âfrom throwing ourselves into the arms of a soulless materialism,â even if it fails to provide any actual knowledge or practical doctrines regarding the soul (B421). These positive results could emerge, however, only after the practitioners of rational psychology were ready to give up their âwindy hypotheses of the generation, extinction, and palingenesis of soulsâ (A683/B711), and redirect their efforts instead to outlining the practical employment of their ideas in the moral sphere, since it was in this sphere alone that such ideas could âregulate our actions as if our destiny reached infinitely far beyond experience, therefore far beyond our present lifeâ (B421; cf. GMS, 5:461)