Kant's Critique Research Articles

Roman Witold Ingarden's academic lectures on Kant's Criticism in Lviv

After the retirement of Kazimierz Twardowski and Mścisław Wartenberg, research on Kant’s philosophy in Lviv significantly declined. This tradition was resumed and continued with great success only by Roman Witold Ingarden. The present article explains the origins of Ingarden’s lectures on Kant’s Criticism in Lviv. It also presents the main theses of Ingarden’s lectures.

The early Polish attempts at translating Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

This article presents the history of the first Polish translation of the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. An active role in its creation was played by: Henryk Struve, Romuald Grzymała-Piątkowski, and Kazimierz Twardowski. The study reveals the problem of the organisers of this initiative to the appointment of a translator and the preparation of the translation's publication. The key role was played by Struve. Twardowski limited himself to criticism, both of the editors of the "Biblioteka Filozoficzna" and of the translator himself. The translation was eventually published in 1901. Despite its flaws and numerous shortcomings, it was the first work by Kant representing a mature critical philosophy to be published in Polish.

Lviv lectures of Kant's criticism

Lectures read and transcribed from the original by:
 Radosław Kuliniak University of WrocławORCID: 0000-0002-0090-6609e-mail: kornik90@poczta.onet.pl
 Mariusz PanduraUniversity of WrocławORCID: 0000-0001-5875-2705e-mail: mariusz.pandura@uwr.edu.pl

Immanuel Kant's philosophy and the reconstruction of Polish philosophy at the turn of the 20th century

The revival of Polish philosophy, after more than a century of partitions, took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At that time, thanks to Wincenty Lutosławski, a correspondent at Kant-Studien, a stimulus was given to the fossilised and dispersed Polish philosophical community. The necessary reforms were spearheaded by Henryk Struve, Władysław Weryho, and Kazimierz Twarddowski. They became animators of philosophical life, establishing Przegląd Filozoficzny, the Polish Philosophical Society in Lviv and prompting the first Polish translations of Kant’s works. Through them, the reforms initiated deepened throughout the period up to the restoration of independence and later in free Poland. Kant’s philosophy became one of the pillars of these reforms. Thanks to them, a new kind of philosophical thinking took shape in Poland, marked by Kantian criticism.

After Hegel: A postmodern genealogy of historical fiction

In this article, we analyze a possible form of the relationship between modernity and postmodernity by examining the transformation of the place of enunciation of criticism as a philosophical narrative and using it as a historical and philosophical criterion. To achieve this, we first focus on key moments in the critical discourse of modernity, and then analyze the role of Kantian criticism in the formation of a postmodern imaginary associated with the notions of useful fiction and linguistification. Finally, from a Hegelian perspective, we consider the validity of the idea of universal history and its connections to emancipatory narratives.

학교 교육의 공공성: 교육과 정치의 관련

The aim of this article is to identify the root cause of the current crisis in school education as the 'loss of publicness' and elucidate its significance. The term 'public' carries diverse connotations in our society, with scholars like Dewey and Habermas attempting to define its method and conditions of acquisition. However, there are limitations to such interpretations. Arendt, a scholar dedicated to restoring the meaning and status of politics in human life, serves as the focal point in this article. In this article, based on Arendt's views, I intend to foster insightful discussions on the concept of publicness. In particular, Chapter 3 delves into Arendt's emphasis on ‘politics as judgment’, drawing from her unique interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment power. Existing research on Arendt's notion of the 'public' predominantly centers on 'politics as action,' where publicness becomes the purpose of politics. Yet, in the realm of politics as judgment, publicness assumes the a priori of judgment power and is serves as a fundamental condition of politics. This indicates that publicness constitutes the foundation of human life.

Kant and Marburg School

After the completion of I. Kant’s “Copernican” turn in metaphysics, all subsequent European philosophy to one degree or another was under his influence. The purpose of the article is to consider the reception and transformation of the Kantian theoretical philosophy by the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. It is necessary to analyze the reasons for H. Cohen's and P. Natorp’s interpretation of Kant's criticism. To do this, one should consider (i) internalist and (ii) externalist factors in the formation of the Marburg School. Neo-Kantianism, on the one hand, emerged as a response to materialism, naturalism, and post-Kantian German idealism. In addition, the Marburg School was strongly influenced by the change in the scientific paradigm in mathematical natural science at the end of the 19th century. The justification by the Marburgers of Kant’s a priori doctrine presupposed thematization, first of all, of: a) purity of thought; b) systematic unity of thought and experience; c) the orientation of philosophy to the “fact of science”; d) transcendental method. As a result, the Marburg School interpreted the Kantian concept of the unity of consciousness; abandoned the principle of synthetic (real) unity of consciousness in favor of systematic (logical) unity; substantiated the purity of scientific thinking; put forward the requirement of orientation of philosophy to the “fact of science”; developed the concept of the origin of thinking (Ursprung); abandoned the idea of “givenness” of the subject of knowledge and proved its “assignment”; changed the understanding of the essence and functions of the transcendental method; put forward the concept of thinking as “generation” (“production”); formulated a new understanding a priori. The changes that took place in the 19th century in philosophy, mathematical natural science and mathematical sciences led to a sharp activation of constructivism. It can be concluded that Kant’s epistemological paradigm was realistic constructivism. Pure constructivism became the paradigm of the Marburg School.

Kant's missing analytic of artistic beauty

AbstractThe Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is a text of unparalleled importance in the history of philosophical aesthetics. Its main claims are adopted by some and rejected by others. A significant number of responses, of both kinds, take the Analytic to apply to all experiences of beauty—most notably, to the beauty of both nature and fine art. Our principal claim is that this assumption is mistaken. The analysis in the misleadingly titled Analytic of the Beautiful applies paradigmatically to judgments of natural beauty. The experience of the beauty of most artworks is different and requires a separate analysis. We detail the modifications required in all four moments of the Analytic and thereby explicate the experience of artistic beauty. This reveals that Kant holds an interesting and historically consequential account of the experience of artistic beauty, which is significantly different from the experience of natural beauty. The analysis further reveals that despite these significant differences, the experiences are both species of a single genus.

Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 by Edgar Landgraf and Elliott Schreiber

Reviewed by: Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 by Edgar Landgraf and Elliott Schreiber Waltraud Maierhofer Edgar Landgraf and Elliott Schreiber. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2020. ix + 340 pp. Given the overwhelming presence of play in today's analog and digital entertainment market, this book is timely. It follows on a number of key studies on play such The Handbook of the Study of Play (2015) and It's All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan (2017), not to mention several new scholarly journals. For a collection of contributions by a range of well-known scholars, Play in the Age of Goethe is exceptional in its focus on the period from 1770 to 1830, its philosophical, literary, and pedagogical approaches to play, and their interconnections, or should I say, interplay. The subtitle aptly reflects the four parts of the volume: theories, narratives, children's play in practice, theory, and narratives and—connecting these parts—the play of language. In their engaged and engaging introduction, Landgraf and Schreiber outline the omnipresence of play and games in today's societies and the proliferation of play studies before they outline why the decades around 1800 were the "formative years" for how we understand play today, for the development of related values, and when it gained significance in aesthetics, pedagogy, even in politics and other fields. As they point out, German writers during the Age of Goethe made "a decisive contribution" to the discourse of play. The list of contributors makes an impressive who-is-who of established and up-and-coming scholars in the area of Goethe studies, most of them in literary and cultural studies. All the articles deserve to be introduced here. The first chapters discuss the "free play" of human faculties as idealist concepts that have formed the basis for discussions about play since Kant's Critique of Judgment. In the first chapter, Christian Weber presents careful readings of anacreontic poems by Gleim, Uz, Klopstock, and Goethe for their (sexual) politics of play, emphasizing the playful aspect in this subgenre of erotic poetry. He argues that Goethe invented a "free play of the human faculties" that made possible a free play between the sexes. He further finds indications "that Anacreontic poetry may have impacted Kant's reconceptualization of the aesthetic beauty." "Why bring German Idealism and poststructuralism into the study of play?" is the question that Samuel Heidepriem sets out to answer in his chapter. He argues that Paul de Man's critique of Schiller's notion of play as humanizing overlooks what Kant in his notion of free play has in common with Schiller: both "remain fundamentally humanist in the sense that humanity 'centers' their aesthetic systems." Heidepriem insists that his solution can help address gaps in contemporary theories of play. Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Goethe's Faust I, are the subjects of scholars Edgar Landgraf and Nicholas Rennie, respectively. In both dramas, games of chance are employed to reflect the human condition "in a world where a profound [End Page 197] sense of contingency has come to replace divine providence and necessity." Edgar Landgraf examines Lessing's use of wordplay as well as two key scenes. Saladin's and Sittah's game of chess is where they are "playing with the game," performing a metaplay about the expectations of the other. The second scene is the ring parable. Landgraf teases out the "hermeneutic play that Lessing invokes with his ring parable (and with the drama at large as the parable represents a play within the play that distills and simultaneously reflects on the hermeneutic approach crucial for Lessing's play for tolerance)." Thus, "false play" is at the heart of the ring parable. It is risky but necessary for the pursuit of religious tolerance and sympathy, and social reciprocity: "Lessing's ring parable suggests that we are not to learn from playing, but need to learn how to play this game and put into practice its underlying hermeneutic stance" because only the playful back-and-forth...

Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning, John F. X.Knasas, The Catholic University of America Press, 2019 (ISBN 978‐0‐8132‐3185‐3), xiv + 330 pp., hb $65

Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning, John F. X.Knasas, The Catholic University of America Press, 2019 (ISBN 978‐0‐8132‐3185‐3), xiv + 330 pp., hb $65

Апология человеческого бытия vs «идеальное человекоубийство»: антропологический проект С.Л. Франка

The emergence of S. L. Frank’s philosophy cannot be understood without clarifying his attitude to Immanuel Kant. Following the early representatives of the theory of cognition of his time who undertook to understand Kant in order to go beyond him (W. Windelband) and their warning against turning Kant’s philosophy into a dogma and allowing for diverse interpretations of Kant (P. Natorp), Frank saw Kant not as a critic and “destroyer” of metaphysics, but as a thinker who laid the foundations of a new metaphysical synthesis. He set himself the task of “transforming” the Kantian philosophy into a new metaphysical system proceeding from the foundational principles of critical thinking. As a result, he managed to overcome the abstract concept of the human being characteristic of Neo-Kantians to put the concrete human in the absolute horizon of being at the focus of philosophical investigations. In his metaphysics anthropology begins to play a system-forming and meaning-forming role, and onto-epistemological reasoning is used as a methodology for revealing the specificities of the human being. Here, too, Frank follows Kant who in his Logic defined the question “What is man?” as the fundamental question of philosophy. Frank’s three books, The Object of Knowledge (1915), Man’s Soul (1915), and The Spiritual Foundations of Society (1930) demonstrate that a metaphysical interpretation of Kantian critique is possible and may turn out to be the foundation of raising and solving topical philosophical problems.

И. Кант в разговорах и размышлениях Н. Н. Страхова

The place occupied by Kant’s philosophical ideas in the reflections of the Russian philosopher, Nikolay Strakhov, needs further study. The material for a historical-philosophical reconstruction of Strakhov’s reception of Kant’s philosophy is the Russian thinker’s home library catalogue, his correspondence and his own philosophical works. Among Strakhov’s interlocutors were not only philosophers and natural scientists, but also writers, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Afanasy Fet, who in many ways determined the cultural and intellectual horizon of the epoch. The many years of correspondence with the last two writers went a long way to shape and develop Strakhov’s perception of Kant as a thinker. Indeed, without a virtual dialogue with Kant no modern philosophical system can be built. Strakhov’s reflections on the Kantian style of thinking, adoption of Kantian criticism as the model of epistemic analysis in many ways determined the features of his own philosophical work and became a catalyst of renewed interest in Russia in the Kantian philosophy in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Семирационалистические тенденции в католической теологии первой половины XIX века

At the onset of the 19th century, a demand for a renewal of thinking forms in Western Christian theology emerged with great clarity. This was primarily due to the intensification of emancipation and secularisation processes in society and the humanities, and the emergence of major, highly influential systems of philosophy that directly addressed questions of religious knowledge and doctrine. This challenge has been especially problematic and painful for Catholicism, whose conservative epistemology attaches great importance to the continuity of Church teaching and tradition. This article highlights the context and some striking episodes of this transitional situation on the example of attempts to adapt elements of Kantian criticism and other emerging philosophical-rationalist paradigms and categories to Catholic thought made by the important German-speaking dogmatists of the time, Georg Hermes and Anton Günther. The author explains why their ideas and schools formed around them (Hermesianism and Güntherianism) were attributed to the Semirationalism and officially declared heterodox, and demonstrates their ideological and epistemic affinity. Particular attention in the article is paid to the critical method of “positive doubt” and the principles of empirical-psychological epistemology, addressed to the data of human consciousness. Special section is devoted to a detailed analytical demonstration of the application of these approaches within the framework of the philosophical-dogmatic reflection of the properties of God in the main works of Hermes. The author concludes that in spite of controversy and failure at a particular historical stage, the speculative and methodological insights of Hermesianism and Güntherianism had a constructive for their time apologetic significance and somehow endured reception in Catholicism, contributing to the formation of the modern Gestalt of theology as a scientific discipline.

LA LIMITE SANS LIMITES QUELQUES RREMARQUES SUE LE PRINCIPE PHENOMENOLOGIQUE DE LA GEGEBENHEIT A L’EPREUVE DU NEOKANTISME

Abstract What, if any, are the limits of the Husserlian concept of Gegebenheit? Is there a limit beyond which nothing can be seen by the phenomenologist? In asking these questions, we allude to a distinction typical of Kantian criticism: “Grenze” or “Schranke”, limit or boundary? These same questions are reformulated in a famous review of Ideen I by Paul Natorp, a Marburg neo-Kantian who directly attacks the unlimited scope Husserl gives to the phenomenological principle of intuition. From a phenomenological point of view, however, the Achilles’ heel of the critical method lies in the impossibility of accessing by intuition, beyond phenomena, the thing-in-itself. A major consequence is that the phenomenological dissolution of the “Grenze” prescribes a limitless opening to the horizon of phenomena. But if we can speak of a limitless openness, it is because in a certain way everything gives itself to be seen. What kind of vision is this? And what kind of Gegebenheit is at work here? The Husserlian answer lies in the recovery of a concept, the “idea in the Kantian sense”, without its counterpart, the “limit”, whereas for Kant as well as for Natorp it is precisely the concept of “limit” that characterizes the gnoseological status of the “idea”.

Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments

Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Aesthetics Inside and Outside of Transcendental Aesthetics

The subject of the research is the features of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", which contribute to the methodological acquisition of aesthetic identity, they are generated through the transition to harmony of higher cognitive abilities, set the prospect of revealing how art is possible, and declare themselves in a specific experience of color and ideality of perfection and other concepts significant for aesthetics. Transcendental aesthetics, within which the first semantic images of aesthetics as a science and cultural form are formed, as a singular a priori of the history of art, as well as the structure of the coloristic discourse of criticism, reduces any objectivity of color and reveals the essential structures of its subjective experience. Kant, with one purely transcendental rhythm of reflection in the first Critique, revealed the conditions for the possibility of the aesthetic, raised the question of what makes all art possible; the transcendental undertaking itself manifested both timelessness and temporality behind their work in art.In the Critique of Pure Reason, the concept of perfection is analyzed outside of transcendental aesthetics, where a more or less definite description of perfection is given, which is directly related to the aesthetic facet of the transcendental meaning of the world. Its exceptional importance for understanding Kantian aesthetics is due to the fact that the metaphysics of perfection in late Kant allows us to rethink the critical approach to identifying the structures of aesthetic judgment in the third "Critique".

Heschel’s Theory of Halakhah

ABSTRACT This article surveys Abraham Joshua Heschel’s writings on Jewish law in order to determine his influences and interlocutors, as well as to evaluate whether his work can serve the needs of those engaged in constructive Jewish thought today. Heschel’s thinking on Jewish law is shaped both by the Kantian critique of Judaism as well as by debates with Reform and Orthodox leaders of his own day. This article concludes that the vagueness in Heschel’s theology of halakhah, as well as a tendency to force halakhic questions into a simple framework of leniency and stringency, limits its usefulness for contemporary Jewish theology.

Ciceronian Officium and Kantian Duty

Ciceronian Officium and Kantian Duty Andree Hahmann and Michael Vazquez One of the characteristic markers of the advent of modern moral philosophy is the conceptual distinction between morality and one's own happiness.1 Nowhere is this innovation more visible than with the concept of "moral duty," which in modern terms is often defined precisely by its opposition to prudential self-interest or one's own happiness.2 It is generally assumed that the Stoics are ancient precursors to this decidedly modern concept.3 The concept of duty, or [End Page 667] something like it, plays a central role not only in their account of the psychology of human action but also in their prototypical conception of natural law ethics.4 Yet as recent commentators have emphasized, while the commonalities are tantalizing, appearances are misleading. The Stoics are, at bottom, eudaimonists in the Socratic tradition for whom the modern distinction between morality and prudence would be incoherent.5 No historian of philosophy will deny the vast expanse that separates Stoicism from modern moral philosophy, but the picture [End Page 668] remains largely obscure. It has long been suspected that Cicero played a decisive role in this development due to his crucial role as a translator and mediator of Greek philosophy. After all, Cicero is responsible not only for giving Greek philosophy a Latin dress, but also for shaping the linguistic and conceptual resources of Western philosophy for centuries to come. Scholars have offered varying explanations for Cicero's role in the movement away from eudaimonism: Cicero's Antiochean and syncretizing tendencies,6 the Roman and juridical cast of his appropriation of Stoic ethics and natural law,7 his emphasis on moral progress and the performance of officia by nonvirtuous agents (a [End Page 669] feature of middle Stoicism),8 his anti-Epicurean polemics,9 or some combination thereof. Most important from the point of view of the history of ethics is the fact that Cicero's ethics of officia, although articulated in a decidedly eudaimonistic framework, eventually formed the basis of an ethical system in which moral principles function to place limits on and constrain one's pursuit and maximization of happiness. Furthermore, when we arrive at Kant, whose radical reconception of moral philosophy is a watershed moment in the history of philosophy, we find a direct reference to Cicero at a crucial point in which he explicitly carries out the separation between morality and happiness. In this article, we would like to unpack this story about the history of ideas and look more thoroughly at the ways in which Cicero could have contributed to the development of the modern understanding of moral duty. In so doing, we also shed new light on the intellectual context within which Kant worked out his first major contribution to moral philosophy. [End Page 670] The remainder of the article is divided into four sections. In the second section we outline basic features of the Stoic concept of καθῆκον. In the third section we examine Cicero's translation of the notion into Latin as officium. While Cicero problematized and deliberated over his translational decision, we do not find an adequate basis to conclude that his translation of the Stoic doctrine into Latin and into a Romanized context led to the sort of development some commentators have suggested. Instead, we find that Cicero's translation largely preserves the basic core of the Stoic doctrine of καθῆκον. In the fourth section, we examine important developments in the meaning of "duty" between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, with a particular focus on Pufendorf's reworking of Ciceronian officium in ways that anticipate Kant's critique of Garve's Ciceronian ethics. While it is not Cicero's translation and appropriation of καθῆκον into Latin as such that shapes the modern understanding of moral duty, we argue that Cicero did play a decisive role in this notion's development. In particular, we argue in the fifth section that Cicero's impact is indirect but substantial: Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten and some of the central theses contained therein are formulated as a direct response to Christian Garve's Ciceronian ethics. Kant, foreshadowed by his predecessor Pufendorf, rejects the Ciceronian...

Dei Filius IV: On the Development of Dogma

Dei Filius IV:On the Development of Dogma Andrew Meszaros Introduction Historically, it is indisputable that the intention of the latter part of chapter 4 of Dei Filius was to restate the substantial immutability of the deposit of faith, not for the sake of rejecting doctrinal development, but for the sake of establishing parameters for a certain profectus fidei—progress or development in the faith—which no Catholic theologian doubted, not even nineteenth-century neo-Scholastics. Then-contemporary (e.g., John Henry Newman and the Tübingen school) and subsequent (e.g., Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac) theologians' theories that were more thoroughly worked out presupposed this immutability. The argument here is simple: Dei Filius's teaching on the immutability of dogma not only did serve as the necessary foundation for any sound (i.e., Catholic) theory of doctrinal development, but continues to do so. While the teaching of Dei Filius itself is limited and incomplete, it is essential. Furthermore, its key feature of dogmatic immutability is not compromised by even the most dramatic of doctrinal developments. To establish the ongoing relevance of Dei Filius for contemporary discussions on doctrinal development, I will first draw out certain key similarities between the nineteenth-century, modernist, and contemporary contexts. This will be followed by a presentation of the relevant portions of Dei Filius. Finally, in the longest section, I will discuss what is at stake in the teaching of Dei Filius and offer some different examples of how doctrines develop in ways that uphold the fundamental-theological principle laid out [End Page 909] in Dei Filius: namely, that all doctrinal development is homogenous with, or in continuity with, the deposit of faith. Anton Günther and Theology Today We can identify two major factors that led to the Vatican Council having to address dogmatic development. The first, and perhaps most important, factor is the implication that Anton Günther's (1783–1863) understanding of faith and reason had on dogma and its immutability. The second factor is simply the fact that, in the midst of these pervasive philosophical and theological disputes over faith and reason, Pius IX not only managed to define the Immaculate Conception as dogma, but did so by papal definition: the 1854 definition was the freshest example of what would later be defined in 1870.1 A brief examination of the thought of Günther will help us better understand why the paragraph on development (i.e., the immutability and progress of dogma) pertains to the faith–reason relationship and, hence, appears in the fourth chapter. 2 Günther's major concern is a noble one: namely, to respond to the Kantian critique of supernatural religion. To do so, he sees it as necessary not only to defend rationally but also to explain rationally—according to the philosophical systems of Schelling and Hegel—Christian dogma. Günther is no brash and pure rationalist. He believes in the history of supernatural revelation. He acknowledges that reason alone could never discover supernaturally revealed truths; but, as a so-called semi-rationalist, he believes that, once made known to it, reason can then penetrate and, indeed, prove these revealed truths.3 [End Page 910] But if revealed mysteries are discoverable by human reason, then those same mysteries have to be interpreted in such a way that is, indeed, within the reach of reason using its proper resources.4 Not Scholasticism but German idealism—especially its category of self-consciousness—was Günther's vehicle for giving an account of the faith. Such a re-interpretation of Christian dogma according idealism's categories naturally alters the original understanding of that dogma. But for Günther, this reinterpretation is necessary if revelation is to be accessible to reason. So, for example, because modern psychology cannot make sense of a distinction between "person" and "nature" that is not coterminous, we must conclude, against Ephesus, that Christ is in fact a unity of two persons. Nor, for that matter, is the human person a composite of body and soul as defined by the Council of Vienne (1311–1312). Because God is self-conscious spirit, there is a process of trebling in God that tends toward...

Does the ontological proof of God’s existence really contain all the probative force of the cosmological argument? The early criticisms of Kant’s thesis by Flatt, Abel and Eberhard

Abstract Shortly after the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s claim that the ontological proof of God’s existence contains all the probative force of the cosmological argument was discussed at great length by J. F. Flatt, J. F. v. Abel and J. A. Eberhard. These early criticisms do not seem to have received the attention they deserve, even though they are extremely relevant, cogent, and difficult to dispute. Regardless of whether their assumptions are accepted, these objections point out certain obscurities and flaws in Kant’s argument, casting doubt, from a logical standpoint, on the success of the main Kantian criticism of the cosmological proof.