Abstract
The essay focuses Kant’s engagement with Plato at the beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, which presents a crucial but often overlooked feature of Kant’s magnum opus. In particular, the essay examines Kant’s positive pronouncements on the “Platonic republic” (Platonische Republik) in Book One of the Transcendental Dialectic by placing them in the twofold context of the first Critique’s affirmative retake on Plato’s Forms (Ideen) and its original views on juridico-political matters. More specifically, the essay aims to show that Kant’s prime position in legal and political philosophy, as contained in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), involves a normative conception of civic life that places the societal exercise of individual freedom under universal laws. Section 1 explores the extent of affinity between Plato and Kant as arch-representatives of ancient and modern idealism. Section 2 traces the transition from Platonic dogmatism to Kantian criticism in the theory of ideas. Section 3 presents Kant’s appropriation of the idea of the “Platonic republic” for purposes of a specifically modern republican account of the rule of law under conditions of freedom.
Highlights
Plato and KantSchopenhauer at one point recommends his readers to focus their study of the philosophers of the past on two outstanding thinkers, Plato and Kant
In other regards Kant shows a critical appreciation for Platonic positions and offers a sympathetic assessment of concepts and doctrines attributed to Plato and reconstructed in the context of Kant’s own emerging or developed views on the nature of knowledge in general and the possibility of synthetic cognitions a priori in particular
The Platonic inspiration behind Kant’s account of ideas and their distinct domain beyond possible experience but within reason is not exhausted by the preparation and propagation of a critically certified metaphysics of the limitative cognition of God, soul and the world, as envisioned in the Appendix of the Transcendental Dialectic
Summary
Schopenhauer at one point recommends his readers to focus their study of the philosophers of the past on two outstanding thinkers, Plato and Kant. Kant’s core project of a critical assessment of past and possible metaphysics, carried out under an epistemological perspective and resulting in the development of “transcendental philosophy” (Transzendentalphilosophie) and its preliminary presentation in the “critique of pure speculative reason” in the Critique of Pure Reason, is shaped by a comprehensive critique of the Platonic and neo-Platonic recourse to intellectual intuition as a dogmatic device claiming pure rational knowledge of supersensory objects. In other regards Kant shows a critical appreciation for Platonic positions and offers a sympathetic assessment of concepts and doctrines attributed to Plato and reconstructed in the context of Kant’s own emerging or developed views on the nature of knowledge in general and the possibility of synthetic cognitions a priori in particular. For Kant, the objective validity of space and time involves at once their “empirical reality” (empirische Realität) – their reality with regard to appearances – and their non-empirical or “transcendental ideality” (transzendentale Idealität) – their ideality qua nonreality with respect to the things (in) themselves. for Kant ideality comes to convey non-validity or “nullity” (Nullität), a conceptual move that amounts to a compete reversal of the Platonic limitation of true reality and actual validity to the ideas in their suprasubjective status as absolute forms
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