The Noise of Time

The ‘I’ fractured by time – if Deleuze returns repeatedly to this seemingly minor moment in Kant's system, it is not simply to sound anew the theme of ‘difference’ (this time, with an a priori accent). No, Deleuze turns to this ‘interior drama’ for the same reason that Kant, in the Opus Postumum, returns to it: it presents the most direct passage from ‘interior’ (self) to ‘exterior’ (Nature). But Kant's late complication of the transcendental field undermines several of his most cherished theses – in particular, the fixity of the table of categories, the homogeneity of the forms of intuition (Space and Time) and the rights of logical determinacy. It is left to Deleuze to radicalise Kant's critique along the lines of time. In contending with this fissure, Deleuze inaugurates nothing less than a truly genetic philosophy of Nature – one that would think with Nature rather than of it. Only one caught in this labyrinthine flow could inquire into the possibility of radical metamorphosis.

Idea Boga w późnych pismach Immanuela Kanta

Kant’s position on the problem of God is radicalized under the influence of transcendental philosophy’s evolving project. The weakening position of physico-theology and the growing importance of moral theology are possible ways of describing the shift in perspective between the pre-critical period writings and the critical period writings. The separation of the area of cognition and action excludes the possibility of formulating theodicy in a classical form. God, as only a conceived idea, and its meaning is firmly grounded in practical philosophy, in which the presentation of the law is a sufficient condition for moral behaviour. In such a model, God is only an idea, but a fully functional one. This could be noticed mostly in the Opus postumum, where in analogy to God’s practical idea, Kant deduces the transcendental ether’s existence. Ether is not just a hypothesis for Kant; it is not just a ‘temporary’ or ‘contingent’ assumption made ad hoc to explain a particular experience. Still, it is a fundamental and indelible condition, a conditio sine qua non of experience in general. The non-hypothetical matter of heat (ether) is the transcendental condition of all experience, though it does not cease to be an ‘intelligible thing’, an ‘idea’. The status of this idea is entirely ‘non-theoretical’. Kant writes about the ether similarly as he writes about the idea of God, which is only conceivable but at the same time it maintains a strong ‘non-theoretical’ status. The Kantian idea of God is strongly objectified. It is not a ‘product’ of reason, but rather something ‘perceived’ by reason, a strictly theistic idea (as Erich Adickes claims). Kant’s statements, characteristic for the Opus postumum, in which God is identified with moral law, of course give grounds to suppose that the deification of practical reason can be understood as a final stage in the long process of anthropologizing God. However, these statements also allow us to consider practical reason as a new source of what is given.

The Tantalus’ Torments of Transcendentalism

Kant’s manuscripts of 1796–1803, which the Academic German edition of his works combined in 21–22 volumes of under the invented by H. Vaihinger name ‘Opus postumum’, still attract the attention of researchers. Was there really a significant theoretical “gap” in the system of Kant's “critical”, transcendental philosophy, which built by 1790, needed to be filled, namely, to undertake a conceptual "transition" from the already constructed a priori metaphysics of corporeal nature (metaphysical principles of natural science) to experimental mathematical physics, to the entire scientific empirical investigation of nature? In the last years of his life Kant tried to solve a problem that was really decisive for the fate of transcendentalism, which he had already realized in ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ and concretized in ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’, however he found himself in a hopeless situation, which doomed him to the “Tantalus’ torments”. The problem that he was constantly thinking about necessarily arises in the system of transcendental philosophy, but has no solution in it. ‘Opus postumum’ is an important piece of evidence on the insurmountable difficulties faced by the attempt to “save” philosophy as a perfect and complete system of absolutely reliable, "apodictic" science, based on the idea of universal and necessary conditions for the experience possibility.

About the Purpose Opus postumum in Kant’s Philosophical System

At the article devoted Kant’s last unfinished work “The transition from metaphysical elements of the natural sciences to physics” (Opus postumum) is made an assumption that Kant in course of the working has decided to change the first title of book extend its subject end to give the new one – “The philosophy as a science”. Only the successfulness of the philosophical system as the methodology of science can be the base of its truth. So, Kant comes to the conclusion a philosophical system mast has two parts: 1 the system of critics (the analysis all cognitions of the soul) and 2 the doctrine, i.e. the theoretical science knowledge as the mediator among philosophy and empirical science. Kant assigns a part of doctrine to Opus postumum. In the course of working at the manuscript Kant suggested number of hypotheses overstepping the limits of classical science. Kant proceeded from the principle of material unity of world in construction of the system so the doctrine should contain three parts. Accordingly in the Opus postumum there are materials devoted to physics, biology and anthropology. Kant introduces the notion of hyperphysics with which idea of a first substance is connected named by Kant a heat matter, or a light, or an ether – an absolutely thin all-penetrating structure could be the basis for every things of material world. This ideas opened perspectives of post-classical science.

The Impossible Possibility of Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism

Stephen R. Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism revisits his earlier work on Kant and Swedenborg, arguing that, contrary to standard interpretations, the arguments of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer expand into ‘Critical mysticism’ throughout the Critical philosophy and into the Opus Postumum. Although the beginning portions of Palmquist’s book successfully disturb the standard portrait of Kant as the all-destroyer of metaphysics and religious experience, his argument for critical mysticism is inconclusive. It is impossible to know if his interpretation of the Opus Postumum is more right than its competitors. The conflict of interpretations shows Palmquist’s interpretation to be a hermeneutic impossible possibility.

A formulação do problema da dedução transcendental em Opus Postumum: é possível identificar, neste, elementos de uma dedução próxima àquela de 1781?

Este trabalho tem por objetivo demonstrar elementos argumentativos apresentados por Kant em seu trabalho final: Opus Postumum, que comprovaria a tentativa de Kant em desenvolver ali uma dedução, contudo, demonstraremos que esta dedução em desenvolvimento no Opus articula elementos que a aproximaria significativamente da dedução transcendental de 1781. Com isto, temos a comprovação que no Opus há uma reavaliação da parte subjetiva da dedução transcendental exposta na primeira edição da Crítica, o que incide numa retomada desta investigação subjetiva por Kant, buscando nesta a tentativa de preenchimento da lacuna que ele considera impedir o fechamento de seu sistema.

Fichtes Intellektualisierung der Anschauung

The power of imagination fulfills a special function with respect to particular intuition and to the forms of intuition of space and time a function that exceeds Kant’s deliberations on imagination. Not just the forms themselves, but also their manifold are orignally generated by that capability. While Kant’s theory of experience starts with a given mannifold and shows how the rule-making role of reason provides productive imagination with a way of assimilating that manifold into a unified perspective, Fichte’s philosophy has the productivity of the imagination reaching further as a novel, revealing inheritance. As a fully autonomously proceeding entity, it further devises not only space and time and their constituent diversity, but also simultaneously generates categories without being dependent on the reason that in the B-version of the Critique is necessary for understanding the composition of time and space. When Kant speaks for example in the Opus Postumum under the heading cogitabile ut dabile about the constitution of the manifold, that form of constitutive act is not to be interpreted as an original genesis. Hence the act of constitutive and determinative synthesis has a different meaning in the two systems.Die Einbildungskraft erfullt bei Fichte eine ganz besondere Funktion in Hinblick auf die einzelne Anschauung und die Anschauungsformen von Raum und Zeit, die über die Kantischen Ausführungen zur Einbildungskraft hinausgehen. So werden nicht nur letztere, sondern auch das in Raum und Zeit enthaltene Mannigfaltige ursprünglich durch die Einbildungskraft generiert. Wahrend die Kantische Theorie der Erfahrung ihren Ausgang vom gegebenen Mannigfaltigen nimmt und zeigt, wie der regelgebende Verstand vermittelst der produktiven Einbildungskraft dieses Mannigfaltige zur – stets begriffenen – Einheit der Anschauung konstituiert, reicht die Produktivität der Einbildungskraft in der Philosophie Fichtes als originar welteroffnendes Vermögen also wesentlich weiter. Vollkommen autonom verfahrend entwirft sie ferner nicht nur Raum, Zeit und das darin enthaltene Mannigfaltige, sondern generiert zugleich die Kategorien, ohne – wie speziell in der B–Auflage der Kritik – auf die Regel eines für die Zeit- und Raumkonstitution notwendig vorauszusetzenden Verstandes angewiesen zu sein. Spricht Kant, wie etwa im Opus Postumum vor dem Hintergrund des Gedankens eines cogitabile ut dabile, von der Bestimmung des Mannigfaltigen, dann ist diese Art der Intellektion nicht im Sinne einer ursprüngliche Erzeugung zu verstehen. Der Akt der anschauungserzeugenden und bestimmenden Synthesis hat in beiden Systemen also eine unterschiedliche Bedeutung.