Verbunden, nicht vermischt. Zum Verhältnis physiologischer und transzendentalphilosophischer Erklärungen bei Kant

Kant-Studien ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-443
Author(s):  
Katharina Blühm
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
German Original ◽  
Virtual Presence ◽  
The Brain

Abstract In his appendix to Soemmerring’s On the organ of the soul, Kant famously rejects the idea of a local presence or seat of the soul in the brain as fundamentally misguided. „By contrast, a virtual presence“ of the soul, considered as a conceptual construct, is said to make it possible to treat „the question regarding the sensorium commune as a merely physiological task“. Where Kant’s German original reads „möglich“, Arnulf Zweig in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant translates surprisingly as „impossible“. This cardinal error shall be communicated to readers who do not habitually consult the German original. Against this background, I illuminate the Kantian position (1) with in-depth material from Kant’s respective drafts and (2) in contrast to the syncretistic–materialistic approach of Johann Jacob Wilhelm Heinse.

scholarly journals Hjernen i Immanuel Kants senværk og Cathrine Malabous samtidskritik

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Steen Nepper Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Late Work ◽  
The Brain

In his late work Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Immanuel Kant depicts the internal processes in the brain as something that cannot have the interest of a pragmatic anthropology. His profound teleology of nature does not bind the idea of man’s selfperfection to the nature of the brain. In her work Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?) from 2004, Catherine Malabou argues that this question of what we should do with our brain needs a self-conscious and political answer. We can and should try to regain control of the processes that mold the cerebral constitution of man. This article discusses the arguments behind the two opposite ʻpositions’ in practical philosophy in a broader philosophical anthropological perspective. What are the limits of Kant’s approach to the brain and does Malabou’s normative project find its take-off in voluntarism?

Skulls, Brains, and Memorial Culture: On Cerebral Biographies of Scientists in the Nineteenth Century

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 195-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hagner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Arthur Schopenhauer ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Biographical Sketches ◽  
The Brain

ArgumentIn this paper I will argue that the scientific investigation of skulls and brains of geniuses went hand in hand with hagiographical celebrations of scientists. My analysis starts with late-eighteenth century anatomists and anthropologists who highlighted quantitative parameters such as the size and weight of the brain in order to explain intellectual differences between women and men and Europeans and non-Europeans, geniuses and ordinary persons. After 1800 these parameters were modified by phrenological inspections of the skull and brain. As the phrenological examination of the skulls of Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Heinse, Arthur Schopenhauer and others shows, the anthropometrical data was interpreted in light of biographical circumstances. The same pattern of interpretation can be found in non-phrenological contexts: Reports about extraordinary brains were part of biographical sketches, mainly delivered in celebratory obituaries. It was only in this context that moral reservations about dissecting the brains of geniuses could be overcome, which led to a more systematic investigation of brains of geniuses after 1860.

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