DESCARTES SUB SPECIE TRANSCENDENTALIS: KANTIAN AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RETROSPECTIVES

Abstract

Paper investigates Descartes’ philosophical conceptions with regard to transcendental perspective. An analysis of relation between Cartesian approach on the one hand and transcendental conceptions of Kant and Husserl (and in part Derrida) on the other allows author lay bare such the aspects and motives of Cartesian thought that correspond to essential principles of transcendental thinking.At the same time the moments of discrepancy between Descartes’ and properly transcendental approaches are examined. Author focuses her attentions especially on such fundamental features of Cartesian philosophy – underlying transcendental reception and reinterpretation of Descartes – as, above all, principle of cogito, as well as peculiarity of philosophical attitude grasped and expressed by Husserl as “I-myself”.Paper demonstrates an ambivalence of appraisal of Descartes’ philosophy by Kantian and Husserlian transcendentalisms: the former is regarded as a source of transcendental method and as a center of “dogmatic” metaphysics. It is shown that Cartesian concept of cogito serves at once as constitutive factor of development of transcendental approach and as main “target” of transcendental critique.Analyzing problematical congruence of “I-myself” with the “relationdifference” principle, positioned as fundamental for transcendental thinking, author shows the way to decide this inconsistency by uncovering of deep and inherent connection between attitude of “I-myself” and idea if otherness, the last being flow-through in transcendental discourse as a whole