François Marty's interpretation of Kant's Opus postumum1

Abstract

The Author provides a systematic reconstruction of a lesser known interpretation of the OP. François Marty is the one scholar who best highlighted the continuity of the Opus postumum with the second Critique. While Gerhard Lehmann had the merit of emphasizing, in Kant’s Nachlasswerk, the structuring function of the reflective judgment, and Vittorio Mathieu pointed out the role of the schematism of the Critique of Pure Reason in it, Marty sees the fulfillment of the critical project of a system of transcendental philosophy in the considerations about the human being as a person, the practical concept of God and the idea of reason, scattered in the form of aphorisms along the last two fascicles—Conv. VII et Conv. I. The unity of reason thus attained cannot be separated from a revision of the ontological argument of the existence of God from an ethical–practical point of view. Marty wrote several papers on the Opus postumum in French, but never published an organic presentation of these issues. This paper provides a systematic reconstruction of Marty’s interpretation of Kant’s transition-project.