scholarly journals Canguilhem’s Critique of Kant: Bringing Rationality Back to Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Marina Brilman

Canguilhem’s contemporary relevance lies in how he critiques the relation between knowledge and life that underlies Kantian rationality. The latter’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment represent life in the form of an exception: life is simultaneously included and excluded from understanding. Canguilhem’s critique can be grouped into three main strands of argument. First, his reference to concepts as preserved problems breaks with Kant’s idea of concepts regarding the living as a ‘unification of the manifold’. Second, Canguilhem’s vital normativity represents life as the potential to resist normative orders that judge the living, relegating Kant’s ‘lawfulness of the contingent’ to a ‘mediocre regularity’. Third, Canguilhem’s introduction of the environment as a ‘category of contemporary thought’ decentres the living/knowing subject and introduces contingency. His idea of the ‘knowledge of life’ leads to the conclusion that life is the condition of possibility of rationality, rather than rationality’s ‘blind spot’.

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Matherne

AbstractIn theCritique of Pure Reason, Kant describes schematism as a ‘hidden art in the depths of the human soul’ (A141/B180–1). While most commentators treat this as Kant's metaphorical way of saying schematism is something too obscure to explain, I argue that we should follow up Kant's clue and treat schematism literally asKunst. By letting our interpretation of schematism be guided by Kant's theoretically exact ways of using the termKunstin theCritique of Judgmentwe gain valuable insight into the nature of schematism, as well as its connection to Kant's concerns in the thirdCritique.


Author(s):  
Carlos Mendiola

The central thesis is that already in the Critique of Pure Reason does the need for the distinction between determining and reflecting uses of Judgment arise, although its nominal formulation appears only later in the second introduction to the Critique of Judgment. The interpretative importance of this thesis lies in that, contrary to most interpretations, which claim that the distinction lies in the nature of such judgments, the author thinks of it as differentiated exercises of an identical capacity of judgment, and even as a difference that must be appreciated in the products of such capacity. Thus, any judgment of objects may at once be determining and reflecting, according to the kind of application of the concepts involved in each case. In brief, although reflection does not properly belong in the conditions of possibility of objective judgment, it is indispensable to fix the conceptual place of the particular in judgment


2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (157) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Tugba Ayas Onol

<p>The paper elaborates the theory of imagination in Immanuel Kant’s <em>Critique of Pure Reason</em> and <em>Critique of Judgment</em>. From the first <em>Critique</em> to the third <em>Critique</em>, the imagination emerges under different titles such as reproductive, productive or transcendental imagination. The paper shall try to decide whether its <em>functions</em> suggested in the first <em>Critique</em> and its performance in the third <em>Critique</em> are <em>contradictory or developmental</em> with respect to Kant’s critical philosophy. Thus, it will examine of the power and the scope of the imagination in the first<em> Critique</em> and of its status and performance in the third <em>Critique. </em></p><p> </p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-273
Author(s):  
Hyeongjoo Kim ◽  
Carina Pape

In his famous essay from 1784, Kant denied that we "live in an enlightened age"; yet he claimed that we "live in an age of enlightenment". If we should answer the question if we live in an enlightened age now, we could basically give the same answer. The enlightenment as an ongoing process can be found throughout Kant's whole work. This article focuses on how the concept of enlightenment can be applied to the Kantian psychology, which marks an important change of theory of the soul within modern western metaphysics. Kant's idea of enlightenment and 'critique' will be illustrated with reference to the "Paralogisms" of the Critique of Pure Reason. Finally, an analysis of some passages of the "Paralogisms" shall demonstrate that Kant's critique of the previous metaphysical doctrine of the human soul should not be understood as a complete rejection of this doctrine; rather, Kant's critique of what is called rational psychology should be understood as a critical transformation.


Author(s):  
Jessica Leech

In the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents an account of the content and role of our concept of real possibility in terms of formal conditions of experience. However, much later in the Critique he introduces the idea of a material condition of possibility. What is this material condition of possibility, and how does it fit with the conception of possibility in terms of formal conditions? This essay argues that the key to answering these questions—as well as to understanding Kant’s criticism of rational theology, in which the discussion of the material condition of possibility appears—is Kant’s account of how we can individuate objects.


Author(s):  
Tim Henning

This brief chapter summarizes central findings regarding the role of parenthetical sentences in practical discourse. But it also provides historical context. It suggests that a precursor of parentheticalism may be found in Kant, especially in Kant’s views about the “I think,” especially as they are expressed in the B-Version of the “Transcendental Deduction” and the B-Version of the chapter on Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-149
Author(s):  
Reinhard Brandt

AbstractRecent publications (Henrich, Seeberg) claim that Kant has been profoundly influenced by contemporary publications on juridical deductions. I try to show, that this cannot be right. The introductory note of the “Transcendental Deduction” (Critique of Pure Reason A 84) poses two questions: “quid facti?” and “quid juris?”. The first is answered by the demonstration of the possibility of relations between pure concepts and pure intuition und sensations, the second by the implicit refutation of David Hume. Kant and his interpreters sustain the possibility of using juridical concepts, that are neither related to real juridical facts nor are only metaphers, but have a special philosophical signification. But what should that be?


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document