Kant's Critique Research Articles

M.N. Boltayev’s Thoughts on “Hegel’s Absolute Idealism” Dedicated to Western Philosophy

This article discusses the work «Absolute Idealism of Hegel” from among the works of the philosopher scientist M.N. Boltaev dedicated to Western philosophy. In this, the great ideological predecessors of Master Hegel, the life and works of Fichte, Fichtean idealism as a description of the «foundation” of Kantian criticism, as well as issues related to science education and Fichteian idealism are covered.

Cure for Kant: Art as Experience as One of the Four Fundamental Texts in Aesthetics

Abstract The article argues that Dewey's Art as Experience is one of just four foundational texts in Western aesthetics, which break down into two oppositions: Plato's Republic versus Aristotle's Poetics and Kant's Critique of Judgment versus Art as Experience. It points out that Dewey's book, after decades of neglect, has helped give rise to a number of rich aesthetic subdisciplines, including everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, somaesthetics, and political aesthetics.

Derrida and Kant's staging of capital punishment

AbstractJacques Derrida's claim that Immanuel Kant was the most rigorous defender of the death penalty has rekindled interest in this topic in the context of Kant's work. Understandably, most articles have focused on Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals, in which he defends the legitimacy of capital punishment. However, many of these readings ignore the fact that the death penalty is a recurring theme in his writing. This article explores references to capital punishment in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and uncovers a consistent theme: the connection between morality and acts of self‐sacrifice. It aims to demonstrate the challenges of formulating a philosophical argument for the abolition of the death penalty.

Кантовская антропология в русской христологии: случай свящ. Иоанна Петропавловского

The article is devoted to the discussion of the late 19th century between the priest Ioann Petropavlovsky and the famous archbishop Savva (Tikhomirov) on the problem of the moral perfections of Christ according to His human nature. The published academic lecture by Petropavlovsky "Jesus Christ is the God-Man", its criticism in the "Diary" of Savva (Tikhomirov), Petropavlovsky's response to criticism and response to the discussion by protopresbyter Ioann Yanyshev are analyzed. According to Petropavlovsky, who acted for reasons of proving the divinity of Christ, the Savior, during His earthly life, struggled with the instincts of His humanity, what was an important moment on the path of His free acquisition of His moral perfections. Thus, Christ can be an effective example for us to follow. Savva (Tikhomirov) considered this position to be contrary to the teaching of the Church, while Yanyshev supported ideas of Petropavlovsky. I examine the genesis of this problem about the nature of the moral perfections of Christ in Russian theology, which is rooted in the theology of st. Innokenty of Kherson. The latter, accepting the Kantian setting of practical philosophy – freedom of choice between good and evil is the possibility of moral development – was the first in the history of Russian theological thought to put forward the hypothesis that Christ could have sinned during His earthly life, but did not sin. The hypothesis made sense as a response to Kant's subtle criticism of traditional Christology, put forward by him in his work "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone". Along with the consideration of these problems, the article attempts to clarify the genesis of the moral-apologetic logic used by Petropavlovsky to prove the divinity of Christ. At the end of the article, Petropavlovsky's theses are considered on the subject of their self-contradictions and examined in the context of patristic theology.

Sensus Communis —Reason, Rhetoric, and Race in Kant

Abstract: In part to shed indirect light on the rhetorical dimensions of current socio- and cultural-political polemics, and on current versions of the rationalist-irrationalist polarity, I examine Kant's critique of both rationalism and irrationalism in "What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?" and related texts through the Critique of Judgment . I show that Kant insightfully produces there an undecidability of the nature-culture and the philosophy/rhetoric oppositions, an undecidability that in turn challenges aspects of his own conception of the critical enterprise. I show then how Kant's development of aesthetic judgment as sensus communis in the Critique of Judgment extends his thinking about this undecidability. Considering the limits of Kant's own adherence to the maxim of the sensus communis —"putting oneself in the place of every other"—I proceed to reexamine his racist race-theory, and to argue that this theory helps him avoid confronting the problems raised by his insights into the inseparability of the nonetheless mutually opposed terms, nature-and-culture and philosophy-and-rhetoric. I suggest here that his insistence on this ideological race theory is significantly overdetermined—his investment in it intensified—by the degree to which it papers over problems with his system to which his own thinking has given rise. Finally, I suggest that it would be useful, in the current situation of widespread manipulation and disavowal of rhetorical means within cultural-political polemics, to confront and acknowledge head-on the undecidabilities Kant exposes but then evades, undecidabilities that emerge in his double critique of rationalism and irrationalism.

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.

Schiller's Critique of Kant's Aesthetic Philosophy

This article aims to demonstrate that Schiller began his aesthetic thought by critically evaluating Kant's Critique of Judgment. What most prompted Schiller to reflect and subsequently develop his own theories was Kant's dualism concerning the relationship between necessity and freedom, or the dichotomy of sense and reason. Schiller's dissatisfaction with these dualisms led him to pursue unity, ultimately finding that the perception of beauty is a harmonizing experience. In his critique of Kant's purely subjectivist view of beauty, Schiller introduced an objective concept of beauty as freedom in appearance. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile the two realms of aesthetic and moral experience, Schiller criticized Kant’s distinction between aesthetics and ethics, arguing that for humans to become moral, they require preparatory measures, which can only be provided through aesthetic education.

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”.