Band 103, Heft 2

In the first edition of his book on the completeness of Kant’s table of judgments, Klaus Reich shortly indicates that the B-version of the metaphysical exposition of space in the Critique of pure reason is structured following the inverse order of the table of categories. In this paper, I develop Reich’s claim and provide further evidence for it. My argumentation is as follows: Through analysis of our actually given representation of space as some kind of object (the formal intuition of space in general), the metaphysical exposition will show that this representation is secondary to space considered as an original, undetermined and as such unrepresentable intuitive manifold. Now, following Kant, the representation of any kind of object involves diversity, synthesis and unity. In the case of our representation of space as formal intuition, this involves, firstly , a manifold a priori , i.e. space as pure form, delivered by the transcendental Aesthetic, secondly , a figurative, productive synthesis of that manifold, and, thirdly , the unity provided by the categories. Analysing our given representation of space – the task of the metaphysical exposition – amounts to dismantling its unity and determine its characteristics with respect to the categories.

In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique , Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances (and hence our spatio-temporal actions) directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s.

The aim of this article is to explore the origin of the difficulty of founding the reflecting power of judgment as Kant outlines it in the Preface of the third Critique . Although a foundation for this faculty was only established in 1790, we must interpret it as a critical solution to an old problem, which Kant had already recognized around 1770. Through his comprehension of the meaning of healthy understanding and native wit he already confirms the impossibility of determining the correctness of our judging activity from the use of rules. This approach of the problem must be understood in the context of the controversy about the concept ‘logica naturalis’ in the Leibniz-Wolffian aesthetics and logic. In close conjunction with this tradition, Kant already tries to offer an elucidation of the question of judging through the aesthetics.

Although Kant (wrongly) holds that the universal communicability of aesthetic judgments logically follows from the disinterested character of the pleasure upon which they are based, Kant’s emphasis on the a priori validity of judgments of beauty can be viewed as a rebuttal of the kind of empiricist arguments that Burke offers to justify the social nature of the experience of beauty. I argue that the requirement of universal communicability is not a mere addition to the requirement of universal validity and is far more relevant to an adequate characterisation of the beautiful than has customarily been assumed. I further argue that the ‘exemplary necessity’ of pure judgments of taste, if understood correctly, reveals beauty’s primordial social significance, enabling us to become alive to a profound universal solidarity among aesthetic subjects.

§ 11 of the Critique of Pure Reason , intended to strengthen the explanation of the categories in the second edition, introduces in its two first remarks the important distinction between the mathematical and the dynamical that will occur also in other later works. In these remarks Kant creates a two-fold grouping within the categories, which seems to be spoilt by a lexical weakness concerning the terms «Classe» and «Abtheilung». As this textual anomaly does not rest on any philosophical foundation we propose a correction aiming at expressing the original Kantian thought.

The life story of Kant’s student F. A. Hahnrieder (1765/6–1829) provides us with new examples of the application of the categorical imperative. Kant has given his opinion about that. The biography of Hahnrieder suggests that Kant has not always insisted on the uniqueness of the interpretation of the categorical imperative. He has also admitted other, “paradoxical”, “unusual”, but not “fantastic” interpretations. Kant has even respected a radical interpretation of the categorical imperative. On the base of the archive data, numerous mistakes about Hahnrieder were corrected in biographies of Kant and in the Akademie-Ausgabe .