The specifi cs of Monotheism (tawhid) as “a thing-in-itself”. On the Evolution of Islamic Theology in the Late Russian Empire

In this paper, we will try to give a dynamic characterization of the object and the subject of Modern theology among the Tatar Muslims on the exemplar of the theological views of ‘Abdunnasīr Qursavi (1776–1812), Shihabutdin Marjani (1818–1889) and Murad Ramzi (1854–1934) (and partly of their contemporaries). The incognizability of the Creator and the faith as “a thing-in-itself” transformed Tatar Religious Epistemology into the cognition of more defi nite realities. Agnosticism in the question of God’s attributes led to the anthropocentric features of theological worldviews. The above-mentioned chain of theologians demonstrates not only the continuity of the Tatar Theology, but also refl ects the dynamics of the evolution of the attitude towards the madhhabs and towards the role of an individual, the specifi cs of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidiya Sufi brotherhood, as well as the Ottoman ‘usul fi qh’ in the modernization period of the early XVIII century. In general, the works of Qursavi constitute a certain system of views that can be considered as a certain cornerstone, the so-called ‘starting point’ of Tatar School of Theology.

Ability as ‘performance’: analyzing the able-ness of ‘life’ through a critical study of The Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Knight

This article deals closely with the relation between the ability and state of being alive. It asks an elemental question: what does the word ‘life’ remind us of? While ‘life’ may generically be defined as the ability to do all that signifies the act of living, a more political way of defining ‘life’ would be to consider it as the medium of being alive as human or, an individual person’s existence. The generic definition of ‘life’ given above may suffer from reductionism if ‘ability’ is interpreted as a thing-in-itself, natural to mankind as an inherent, embedded process. This article, therefore, aims to analyze life by stepping out of this biological method of understanding and concentrates on the socio-economic and cultural nexus in which the ability to do is produced. It has chosen cinema as a medium of analysis because cinema does not dwell in a (cinematic) utopian space of its own, but it represents reality as much as it affects reality through the audio-visual experience of the audience.

Das Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Zeit bei Kant und Schopenhauer

This paper focuses on Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s models of self-consciousness and their specific relation to time. It aims to show that genuine philosophical theories can explain the idiosyncratic relation between ourselves and the world without relying on pure metaphysical speculations or strictly empirical and phenomenally oriented conceptions, as many contemporary proponents of analytic philosophy entail. The first groundbreaking doctrine in this regard is Kant’s transcendental theory of apperception, which unfolds a new theoretical dimension of thinking, grounding the logical unity of thought in the pure, originally synthetic unity of the subject itself. In order to constitute a structural order within the appearing phenomenal world, Kant conceptualizes a theory of self-affection in the second edition of the Critique of pure reason, positing a dynamic relation between the spontaneously acting intellect and the purely receptive inner sense of time as a result of productive transcendental imagination. The problematic relation between self-reliance and empirical consciousness that Kant did not resolve completely led to various subsequent transformations of Kant’s transcendental principles, one of which boasts Schopenhauer as a prominent but rarely considered representative. Schopenhauer’s systematic approach consists in a modified version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, which ties the Kantian subject of logical and transcendental unity to an intuitive corporeal individual that can only conceptualize itself as an original, willing subject. The Schopenhauerian subject unfolds its empirical character in accordance with its own inner impulses and motivations, which manifest themselves in time but can only be interpreted as a phenomenal representation of a higher, metaphysical unity, which Schopenhauer calls the will as a thing in itself. Schopenhauer reaches his final metaphysical conclusion via a problematic analogy, positing another perspective on the corporeal nature of the individual which, by means of abstraction, can be extended to the whole phenomenal world. Therefore, Schopenhauer interprets the underlying (intelligible) character of the subject and the phenomenal world as a whole as a timeless, omnipresent will to live which can be temporally experienced within the nature of our own subjectivity.

Die Raum- und Zeitlehre Alois Riehls im Kontext realistischer Interpretationen von Kants transzendentalem Idealismus

In The Philosophical Criticism, Alois Riehl developed a realistic interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism based on his theory of space and time. In doing so, more than 100 years ago, he formulated an interpretation of the relation between the thing in itself and appearances that is discussed in current research as the metaphysical „dual aspect“ interpretation, although it is rarely attributed to Riehl. To reconstruct Riehl’s position, the research results of comparative studies on Moritz Schlick are systematically extended and applied to the current debate on Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Hermann Cohen and His Idea of the Logic of Pure Knowledge

Hermann Cohen, as it is well known, criticised the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. And before him the Kantian thing-in-itself was criticised by Fichte and other German idealists. Probably for this reason, Hermann Cohen is sometimes regarded as a person who said things similar to Fichte. This gives a completely wrong perspective, making it impossible to understand the philosopher's ideas. The basis for his critique of the Kantian thing-in-itself is quite different from the motives, determining the criticism of Kant in the classical German Idealism. Such interpretation does not allow to see close connection of Cohen's theoretical philosophy with revolution in physics which took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article explains how Cohen's demand that pure thinking must form its own content is connected with transformations taking place in physics and mathematics, and the peculiarity of Cohen's understanding of idealism is demonstrated: for him, correct idealism must realize that autonomous, free thinking should work seriously with sense data. The closeness of Cohen's ideas to the postpositivist thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation is explained. For Cohen, serious work with sense data is opposite to uncritical acceptance of them as given. The origin of scientific thinking is thinking itself. It responds to the challenge of sensory material by creating its own constructs. Mathematized natural science becomes for Cohen both an example and a confirmation of this thesis. For him, what is real is what is described in the language of mathematical analysis, i.e. continuous processes, in spite of the fact that any data are discrete. It is shown that the source of Cohen's assertions on this issue is in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely in the doctrine of the Principles of pure natural science and, more specifically, in the Anticipations of Perception. Cohen's conviction of the constructive character of the theories of mathematized natural science is confirmed in the article by references to the authority of A. Einstein.

A lyrical discourse/text as a speech genre crossover

The author of the article understands lyrical discourses/texts as holistic speech acts, generated by inflamed emotions and a wide range of strong emotional affects which are certainly essentially interactive by nature. The notion of an authocommunicative (in a broader sense – lyrical) speech genre crossover embraces literary and colloquial, primary and secondary speech genres in the form of monologues and dialogues. The permanent feature of all of them is their special insightful stylistic expressiveness. Internal speech, in case it is used by a competent user capable of creative figurative thinking, when addressed to the proper addressee turns from the thing in itself to the thing (discourse/text) for those who are entitled and those who know. The proper addressee is a desirable communicative and emotional category which in this case presupposes openness to those whose are ready for a thorough sincere internal dialogue with the given lyrically coloured speech act. Lyrical discourses/texs of a speech genre crossover may be characterized through the universal psychological-semantic triad of attention – joint participation – discovery. Absorbing selflessly into a lyrical text we wire up our attention to the original intonations of the author’s state of mind and mood. This is followed by a noticeably updated personal experience of the addressee, initiating new individual evaluative feelings, directly or indirectly related to the dynamics of the author’s intentions. Eventually, comes the final chord which is able to transfer the discovery of sensory and conceptual author’s intentions. The integral perception of perfect lyrical discourses/texts introduces us to numerous cultural practices of phatic and informational interactions invigoratingly influencing authocommunictive aptitudes of the person, which at long last facilitates their free emotional and intellectual enhancement.

Concluding Postscript: The World According to Kant

This completes my account of Kant’s critical idealism, understood as an ontological position, as developed in the Critique and associated theoretical writings. According to Kant, the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, comprises several levels of reality, most importantly, the transcendental level and the empirical level. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which Kantian things in themselves exist; the empirical level is a mind-dependent level at which Kantian appearances exist. Things in themselves are mind-independent, appearances are fully mind-dependent. Things in themselves and appearances are numerically distinct and do not ontologically overlap in any way. Kantian outer appearances essentially are intentional objects of outer experience; Kantian inner appearances essentially are intentional objects of inner experience. Empirical objects are Kantian outer appearances, empirical space and time are constituted by the spatial and temporal determinations of outer appearances, pure space and time are (nothing but) forms of sensibility, and empirical selves, or empirical minds, are Kantian inner appearances. In contrast to other intentional objects, such as the intentional objects of fictions, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, and perceptions, Kantian appearances genuinely exist, that is, they exist from the point of view of fundamental ontology. This is due both to the special character of experience, in particular, the special character of outer experience and its conformity to Kant’s formal conditions of objectivity, and to the grounding of Kantian appearances in things themselves. Kantian things in themselves transcendentally affect sensibility and thereby bring about sensations, which provide the ‘matter’ for Kantian appearances and underwrite their existence. Kantian things in themselves are supersensible, non-spatial, and non-temporal, as well as distinct from God and thus finite. Each inner appearance is grounded in a unique Kantian thing in itself that is a human transcendental mind, and all outer appearances are grounded in Kantian things in themselves that are distinct from all human minds. What we commonly call ‘the external empirical world’ exists, including empirical space and time. Accordingly, there is also at least one Kantian thing in itself that is not a human mind. Moreover, there is at least one human being, that is, an entity whose ontologically basic parts include, minimally, a body (which is an empirical object), an empirical self (which is an empirical mind), and a transcendental self (which is a human transcendental mind). Since other intentional objects that are not Kantian appearances, although not genuine existents, are not nothing but have some reality and being, it is useful to conceive of Kantian reality as including yet another mind-dependent level to provide a home for these other fully mind-dependent entities—even if this conception goes beyond the direct textual evidence and may also go beyond Kant’s private, explicitly articulated thoughts on the matter. The ultimate basis for Kant’s case for transcendental idealism is the finitude of the human mind and, more specifically, its fundamentally uncreative nature in which this finitude manifests ...

Archetype and matrix image (potential forms of an image)

The article is devoted to the analysis of potential forms of the image in culture and the development of the Jungian concept of an archetype in Wunenburger, Bachelard, Durand and modern cultural studies. The notion of archetype in Carl Jung’s concept is related to the distinction between the archetype in itself, noumenon and archetype image conceived as a phenomenal manifestation of archetypal forms in the space-time, historical and social reality. This distinction has a Kantian lineage, which Jung was clearly conscious of. He provides a reference to the conception of Kant, calling it “a school of philosophical criticism” several times in his writings. In the studies of Jung’s concept, his approach to transcendentalism (Z. Rosińska) is at times present, and a certain type of its specific, evolutionary interpretation is used. The archetype, being a “thing in itself ”, determines the appearance of phenomenal forms in the space-time, historical and social world, while remaining outside the direct entanglement and referring to the evolutionally active sphere of the unconscious as an anthropological datum. The archetypal image expresses the permanent approximation of manifestation of the semantic core of the archetype itself. The notion of an archetype has evolved in contemporary understandings and conceptions; it was conceived as a psychological expression of the evolutionary pattern of behavior, as an affective-representative node and ante rem of an idea, as a hermeneutic pattern of meaning or as a kind of matrix image. The archetype can be understood in connection with anthropological structures or with a cultural image; one way of comprehension does not exclude the other.