Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-5
Daniel Minkin
Throughout history, both philosophers and non-philosophers have doubted that philosophical positions qua philosophical positions are justified and that philosophy is a rational enterprise. Today, such doubts are grouped under the term “Metaphilosophical Skepticism”. Nicholas Rescher, in his book Strife of Systems, includes Kant among the proponents of this kind of skepticism. I want to argue that while Rescher is wrong, Kant has contributed to a new version of such skepticism. In the first step, I characterize the basic idea of metaphilosophical skepticism in more detail and identify a version of this idea, which I call “Second-Stage-Skepticism” and on which I will focus. In the following part, I reconstruct Rescher’s reading of Second-Stage-Skepticism as well as his reasons for considering Kant to represent this version. My main claim in this part will be that there is no reading of the mentioned basic idea that makes Rescher’s view reasonable. In the third step, I introduce a newer form of metaphilosophical skepticism — “Third-Stage Skepticism” — and conjecture that this form can be seen as inspired by Kant’s thought on philosophical diversity. Finally, I point out a way to reject this newer form.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-2
Ernesto V. Garcia
Kant’s metaphilosophy has three main parts: (1) an essentialist project (“What is philosophy?”); (2) a methodological project (“How do we do philosophy?”); and (3) a taxonomic project (“What are the different parts of philosophy, and how are they related?”). This paper focuses on the third project. In particular, it explores one of the most intriguing yet puzzling aspects of Kant’s philosophy, viz. the relationship between what Kant calls ‘pure’ philosophy vs. ‘applied’, ‘empirical’ or what we can broadly refer to as ‘impure’ philosophy. (As we shall see, in order to be able to address this third project, we shall also need to examine the other two projects in detail.) My plan is as follows. First, I discuss four main areas of pure vs. impure philosophy: (i) ‘pure logic’ vs. ‘applied logic’; (ii) ‘rational psychology’ vs. ‘empirical psychology’; (iii) ‘pure metaphysics of nature’ vs. ‘physics’ and (iv) ‘pure morality’ or a ‘metaphysics of morals’ vs. ‘moral anthropology’, ‘practical anthropology’ or ‘applied moral philosophy’. Based on this, I identify four key differences between pure and impure philosophy. Second, I critically examine four different readings of Kant’s views about the status of ‘impure’ philosophy: (a) that it is not genuine philosophy; (b) that it is bad or inferior philosophy; (c) that it is instrumentally valuable; and (d) that it constitutes an indispensable part of Kant’s philosophy, both in a theoretical and practical sense. I argue that Kant is best interpreted as endorsing readings (c) and (d). Third, I offer some concluding remarks.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-4
Elena Ficara
My aim is to reconstruct the basic steps and the fundamental idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction of categories as well as Hegel’s interpretation and reframing of Kant’s idea. Hegel’s reading is crucial for two reasons: first, for fixing the basic form of the Kantian argument and secondly, for understanding its metaphilosophical relevance. For Hegel, philosophical proof has a specific nature, which distinguishes it from scientific proof and brings it closer to a juridical one. In this perspective the transcendental deduction, which is universally considered one of the most difficult chapters in the history of philosophy, reveals itself as the genuine clarification of specifically philosophical proof. I first present the idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as its Hegelian reading in the Science of Logic and reformulation as the very method of philosophy in the Philosophy of Right. I show what in the Kantian argumentation constituted the basis for Hegel’s own interpretation and transformation. In so doing, I highlight a ‘red thread’ between the two ideas of the transcendental deduction. I conclude by proposing a formal account of Kant’s and Hegel’s ideas and by summing up the main metaphilosophical insights we can gain from Kant’s idea and its Hegelian interpretation.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-3
Michael Lewin, Timothy Williamson
In the current dialogue between two authors with different views on analysis, philosophy, and the use of labels, the leading question is: How should one understand the expression ‘analytic philosophy’? Lewin argues that as there are no generally agreed tenets and methods of what is being called ‘analytic philosophy’, the name is to be replaced by a more specific one or abandoned. Williamson defends the use of this phrase, claiming that it is quite serviceable, as it relates to a broad tradition of influence, while it is not even required to adhere to the method of analysis in any distinctive sense. Lewin counters that, in this case, ‘analytic philosophy’ is too empty. One could heal this by conceptual analysis of ‘analytic philosophy’ — but then Kant, for whom philosophy is inherently analytic, would be a proponent of analytic philosophy. Another option is to follow Ryle’s ideal of a label-free, coherent and honest thinking. As Lewin argues, Williamson’s views seem at least partially to agree with Kant’s conception of the difference between philosophy and history of philosophy as well as empirical analysis and the underlying empirical realism. Williamson replies that he uses ‘analytic philosophy’ in its current meaning, which is not composed of the meanings of ‘analytic’ and ‘philosophy’. The current use is different from the earlier ones and not applicable to Kant. He argues against the transcendental idealism and the coarse-grained distinction between analytic and synthetic and a priori and a posteriori that requires an update.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-7
Vladimir A. Konev
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-6
Boris V. Mezhuev
This text is a polemic against the 2023 article by Sergey N. Gradirovsky who wrote about the present-day relevance of Immanuel Kant’s concept of enlightenment and challenged the idea of the modern human being as a child who needs an external guardian or guide to control his behaviour. In my polemic with Gradirovksy I point out that in addition to “self-incurred immaturity” Kant writes about the historical “immaturity” of savage or backward peoples. I also argue that for Kant “maturity” carries not only biological but also socio-historical connotations. I show that in the modern world Kant’s idea of the social or even historical maturity of the modern human acquires serious problematisation which was shown to be possible and inevitable in the article “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784) and its notion of the historicity of enlightenment, i.e. the very strategy of modernity is possible only when humankind reaches a certain historical age. Using as a point of departure the ideas of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, I maintain that the Kantian conception of enlightenment is at once ironic and tragic. It is ironic because it does not rule out that its main thesis on the historical maturity of the human being may turn out to be wrong. It is tragic because its main thrust is “heroisation of the present”, i.e. a readiness to resist the temptation of being absorbed by the future, which takes on added relevance in view of the virtualisation of reality.
这篇文章是对Sergey N. Gradirovsky在2023年的一篇文章的争论,他写了一篇关于伊曼努尔·康德启蒙概念的当今相关性的文章,并挑战了现代人作为一个孩子需要外部监护人或向导来控制自己行为的观点。在我与格拉迪罗夫斯基的争论中,我指出,除了“自我招致的不成熟”之外,康德还写到了野蛮或落后民族的历史“不成熟”。我还认为,对康德来说,“成熟”不仅具有生物学的内涵,而且具有社会历史的内涵。我指出,在现代世界中,康德关于现代人的社会甚至历史成熟的观点得到了严重的问题化这在"启蒙是什么? "一文中被证明是可能和不可避免的。(1784)及其启蒙的历史性概念,即现代性的战略只有在人类达到某个历史时代时才有可能。我以法国哲学家米歇尔·福柯(Michel Foucault)的思想为出发点,坚持认为康德的启蒙概念既是讽刺的,又是悲剧的。它之所以具有讽刺意味,是因为它并不排除其关于人类历史成熟的主要论点可能被证明是错误的。它是悲剧性的,因为它的主旨是“现在的英雄化”,即准备抵制被未来所吸引的诱惑,这在现实的虚拟化中具有额外的相关性。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-1
Michael Lewin
There is a growing interest in both Kant’s conception of philosophy and contemporary metaphilosophy, understood as philosophical inquiry into philosophy, its aims, purpose, subjects, structure, practice and methods. Kant has not contributed to metaphilosophy qua contemporary discipline, but his direct analyses of what philosophy is and how it is to be done can be identified with general subjects and problems constituting the research field of metaphilosophy. Several aspects of Kant’s conception of philosophy and its metaphilosophical value are the subject of current debates, such as the taxonomy of philosophy, relation between empirical and non-empirical philosophy, relation between philosophy and its history, conceptual analysis, deductive reasoning and philosophical disagreement.
{"title":"Introduction to ‘Kant and Metaphilosophy’","authors":"Michael Lewin","doi":"10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5922/0207-6918-2023-3-1","url":null,"abstract":"There is a growing interest in both Kant’s conception of philosophy and contemporary metaphilosophy, understood as philosophical inquiry into philosophy, its aims, purpose, subjects, structure, practice and methods. Kant has not contributed to metaphilosophy qua contemporary discipline, but his direct analyses of what philosophy is and how it is to be done can be identified with general subjects and problems constituting the research field of metaphilosophy. Several aspects of Kant’s conception of philosophy and its metaphilosophical value are the subject of current debates, such as the taxonomy of philosophy, relation between empirical and non-empirical philosophy, relation between philosophy and its history, conceptual analysis, deductive reasoning and philosophical disagreement.","PeriodicalId":53007,"journal":{"name":"Kantovskii sbornik","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135317121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}