Saving Metaphysics: Kant and the Berlin Academy’s Reception of Critical Philosophy
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Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet
Abstract
This article examines the reception of Kant’s theoretical philosophy at the Berlin Academy during the 1790s, with particular attention to two central themes: philosophical method and the status of metaphysics. I argue that Kant’s ideas were received at a moment when academic philosophy had already emerged as an autonomous current within the late German Enlightenment. The philosophers of the Academy actively engaged with his writings, using them as a catalyst to refine and radicalize their own views on the practice of philosophy and the role of metaphysics. The analysis focuses on the memoirs of J.-B. Merian (1723–1807) and L. F. Ancillon (1740–1814), who sought to counter what they perceived as Kant’s dismantling of metaphysics. I contend that, despite earlier opposition to Wolff’s system within the Academy, the members of the speculative philosophy class strove to reassert the value of metaphysics, gravitating toward a more Wolffian perspective. Thus, by the end of the 1790s, earlier pluralistic conceptions of metaphysics had largely given way to a foundational approach aimed at countering Kant’s critique.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Nachruf auf Karl Ameriks (1947–2025)
- Abhandlungen
- The Logical Use of Reason in the First Critique and Its Connection with the Reflective Power of Judgment
- Practical Faith and Theoretical Practice: The Single Logic Underlying Kant’s Deduction of Nature’s Purposiveness and the Deduction of the Highest Good
- Der Platz der ‚Obersten Einteilung des Naturrechts‘ (AA 06: 242.12–19) in Kants Rechtslehre
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Introduction: Kant and the Berlin Academy
- L’évaluation critique du concept de monade de Béguelin à Kant
- Johann Christoph Schwab et le kantisme
- The Story of a Phantom Conflict: The Dispute over Leibniz’s Philosophy in the Second Round of the Kant-Eberhard Controversy
- Saving Metaphysics: Kant and the Berlin Academy’s Reception of Critical Philosophy
- Mitteilungen zur Logiknachschrift Volckmanns
- Bibliographie
- Kant-Bibliographie 2023
- Buchbesprechungen
- Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet: L’Avènement de la métaphysique kantienne. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023, 351 pages. ISBN: 978-2406148173.
- Kants Schriften in Übersetzungen. Hrsg. von Gisela Schlüter. Hamburg: Meiner, 2020, 872 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-7873-3858-0. [Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderheft 15.]
- Mitteilungen
- Gutachter-Dank
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 116, 2025
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Nachruf auf Karl Ameriks (1947–2025)
- Abhandlungen
- The Logical Use of Reason in the First Critique and Its Connection with the Reflective Power of Judgment
- Practical Faith and Theoretical Practice: The Single Logic Underlying Kant’s Deduction of Nature’s Purposiveness and the Deduction of the Highest Good
- Der Platz der ‚Obersten Einteilung des Naturrechts‘ (AA 06: 242.12–19) in Kants Rechtslehre
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Introduction: Kant and the Berlin Academy
- L’évaluation critique du concept de monade de Béguelin à Kant
- Johann Christoph Schwab et le kantisme
- The Story of a Phantom Conflict: The Dispute over Leibniz’s Philosophy in the Second Round of the Kant-Eberhard Controversy
- Saving Metaphysics: Kant and the Berlin Academy’s Reception of Critical Philosophy
- Mitteilungen zur Logiknachschrift Volckmanns
- Bibliographie
- Kant-Bibliographie 2023
- Buchbesprechungen
- Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet: L’Avènement de la métaphysique kantienne. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023, 351 pages. ISBN: 978-2406148173.
- Kants Schriften in Übersetzungen. Hrsg. von Gisela Schlüter. Hamburg: Meiner, 2020, 872 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-7873-3858-0. [Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderheft 15.]
- Mitteilungen
- Gutachter-Dank
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 116, 2025
