Abstract

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 theology” of the highest principle and the supersensible as a whole. The reasons are rooted in the character of propositional thought, which can only circumscribe a singular, supersensible reality by means of predicative sentences and discursive thought. Taking Kant’s lead, but in contrast to his terminology, I call really existent singularities, including the thinking, knowing, desiring, feeling unique individuals we know as human beings, spontaneities, in order to distinguish them from descriptive characteristics attributed to them by predicative thought. Kant’s “practico-dogmatic” account of the postulates of God and immortality of the soul, based on the “fact of freedom” and its connection to the moral imperative, ensure the possibility of the “highest good” as final aim of moral behaviour — but cannot satisfy our need for knowledge of the supersensible. To “lay the groundwork” for experience of our own self-conscious reality, the reality of others like ourselves, of things which transcend the boundaries of sense intuition, and of true reciprocity, a different method is needed, one which leads us “beyond being and thought” to the unconditional beginning of conditional reality.

Highlights

  • Kant on the Impossibility of Theoretical Knowledge of the SupersensibleКаждый человек желает обрести опыт настоящего понимания, единения, общности с отдельными уникальными индивидами «своего рода», «себе подобными», и единственным источником собственной уникальной реальности

  • The problem of how to think and speak about singular existent realities, whether they manifest themselves as things, events, or animate beings, those which act as the occasion of singular occurences which can be perceived or inferred to originate with them — without turning them into generalities or “thought-entities” — is closely related to the problem of how to think the singular reality that we posit as God or the First Principle of all that is, can, or should be

  • 2 A distinction made by Spinoza in Part I of the Cogitata Metaphysica, the appendix to his exposition of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, where he differentiates ente reali, ficto et rationis — real being which he understands to be “Whatever, when it is clearly and distinctly perceived, we find to exist necessarily or at least be able to exist” from fictitious beings and from beings of reason, which are themselves unreal (Part I, Chapter 1; Spinoza, 1985, pp. 299-300)

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Summary

Kant on the Impossibility of Theoretical Knowledge of the Supersensible

Каждый человек желает обрести опыт настоящего понимания, единения, общности (или по крайней мере общения, коммуникации, взаимодействия) с отдельными уникальными индивидами «своего рода», «себе подобными», и единственным источником собственной уникальной реальности. Kant finds himself in agreement with Plato, insofar as Plato “discerned that our cognitive power feels a much higher need than merely to spell out appearances according to synthetic unity in order to be able to read them as experience; and that our reason naturally soars to cognitions which go far beyond the point where any object capable of being given by exразбирать явления по буквам согласно синтетическому единству, чтобы [потом] быть в состоянии прочитать в них [слова] опыта; он видел, что наш разум естественно воспаряет в область познаний так далеко, что ни один предмет, который может быть дан опытом, никогда не сможет совпасть с этими познаниями...»; тем не менее идеи «обладают реальностью и вовсе не суть одни лишь химеры» The purposiveness of nature is brought to investigation of nature only “problematically”, “so as to bring nature under principles of observation and investigation by analogy with the causality in terms of purposes, without presuming to explain it in terms of that causality” (KU, AA 05, p. 360; Kant, 1987, p. 236)

Аналогия и эстетическое суждение как подход к пониманию сверхчувственного
Analogy and Aesthetic Judgment as Approach to the Supersensible
Conclusion
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