Abstract: This article contends that the relation of early logical empiricism to Kant was more complex than is often assumed. It argues that Reichenbach's early work on Kant and Einstein, entitled The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920) aimed to transform rather than to oppose Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. One the one hand, I argue that Reichenbach's conception of coordinating principles, derived from Kant's conception of synthetic a priori principles, offers a valuable way of accounting for the (...) historicity of scientific paradigms. On the other hand, I show that even Reichenbach, in line with Neo-Kantianism, associated Kant's view of synthetic a priori principles too closely with Newtonian physics and, consequently, overestimated the difference between Kant's philosophy and his own. This is even more so, I point out, in the retrospective account logical empiricism presented of its own history. Whereas contemporary reconstructions of this history, including Michael Friedman's, tend to endorse this account, I offer an interpretation of Kant's conception of a priori principles that contrasts with the one put forward by both Neo-Kantianism and logical empiricism. On this basis, I re-examine the early Reichenbach's effort to accommodate these principles to the paradigm forged by Einstein. (shrink)

The paper provides a reconstruction of the notion of material Apriori while exhibiting the anti-Kantian inspiration and factual grounding thereof. The attempt is made to show that a non-formal Apriori obtains because the sensuous has a normative character; further, that the difference between material and formal eidetic laws is rooted in the difference between sensuous contents, given in experience, and intellectual contents, originating in activities of judgement. The material Apriori is not independent of all experience, since it is grounded on (...) sensuous eidetic contents and thus depends on the latter’s givenness and characteristics. It is thanks precisely to this ,contingency‘ that it has an ontological significance. (shrink)

I examine a range of issues concerning Kant's conception of cognitive spontaneity. I consider whether we can cognize or know ourselves as spontaneous cognizers, and why Kant seems to regard the notion of cognitive spontaneity as less problematic than the idea of moral spontaneity. As an organizing theme of my discussion, I use an apparent tension between the A-edition and the B-edition of the first Critique. Against common interpretations, I argue that in the B-edition Kant does not revoke his claim (...) that we can cognize, and even know, that our noumenal selves are absolutely spontaneous cognitive agents. (shrink)

Der Kommentar zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft bietet eine textnahe Erschließung der zentralen Begriffe, Thesen und Argumentationsgänge von Kants Hauptwerk auf aktuellem Forschungsstand. Es ist der erste Kommentar zur KrV, der den gesamten Text in der Fassung der ersten und zweiten Auflage gleichmäßig und lückenlos berücksichtigt. Davon profitieren vor allem die „Transzendentale Dialektik“ und die „Methodenlehre“, die in früheren Gesamtkommentaren meist nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt worden sind. Die Beiträge wurden nach einheitlichen Richtlinien verfasst, wobei unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und Interpretationsansätze zur Geltung kommen. (...) Um dem Leser dieses Kommentars die Orientierung zu erleichtern, ist jeder Beitrag in drei bzw. vier Teile untergliedert: Der erste Teil behandelt die Stellung und Funktion des kommentierten Textabschnitts in der KrV, der zweite Teil gibt einen Überblick über Inhalt und Aufbau des Abschnitts, der dritte Teil enthält den eigentlichen Textkommentar. Wo dies sinnvoll erschien, wurden in einem vierten Teil wichtige Interpretationsfragen angesprochen. Hinweise auf weiterführende Spezialliteratur am Ende eines jeden Beitrags, eine Auswahlbibliographie zu Kant und zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft sowie ein Namen- und ein Sachregister machen den Band zu einem komfortablen Arbeitsmittel für den Benutzer. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage trägt der Tatsache Rechnung, dass der Band mittlerweile als Standardwerk der Kant-Forschung gilt. Mit Beiträgen von Henry Allison, Karl Ameriksm Reinhard Brandt, Wolfgang Carl, Konrad Cramer, Jean Ferrari Eckart Förster, Volker Gerhardt, Paul Guyer, Otfried Höffe, Hansgeorg Hoppe, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Heiner F. Klemme, Lothar Kreimendahl, Béatrice Longuenesse, Georg Mohr, Birgit Recki, Alain Renaut, Peter Rohs, Gerhard Seel, Dieter Sturma, Bernhard Thöle, Eric Watkins, Marcus Willaschek. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar qué significa “conocimiento trascendental” en la Crítica de la razón pura de Kant, especialmente a partir de una explicación de las razones por las que este modificó en la segunda edición la definición ofrecida en A 11s. En primer lugar, me centro en la concepción de la ontología de Wolff y Baumgarten, y explico por qué la definición de conocimiento trascendental que Kant ofreció en la primera edición había de resultarle insatisfactoria. En segundo (...) lugar, profundizo en las razones de la corrección introducida por Kant en 1787 (B 25). Sostengo que solo esta última formulación revela la originalidad del conocimiento trascendental con respecto a la ontología de Wolff y Baumgarten, debido a que tal formulación clarifica que el conocimiento trascendental se centra en nuestro tipo específico de conocimiento (unsere Erkenntnißart), frente a la indeterminación de la que, según Kant, adolece la ontología de sus predecesores. Finalmente, planteo una breve discusión crítica sobre la base de estos resultados. (shrink)

The article attempts to reconsider the relationship between Leibniz’s and Kant’s philosophy of geometry on the one hand and the nineteenth century debate on the foundation of geometry on the other. The author argues that the examples used by Leibniz and Kant to explain the peculiarity of the geometrical way of thinking are actually special cases of what the Jewish-German mathematician Felix Hausdorff called “transformation principle”, the very same principle that thinkers such as Helmholtz or Poincaré applied in a more (...) general form in their celebrated philosophical writings about geometry. The first two parts of the article try to show that Leibniz’s and Kant’s philosophies of geometry, despite their differences, appear to be preoccupied with the common problem of the impossibility to grasp conceptually the intuitive difference between two figures (such as a figure and its scaled, displaced or mirrored copy). In the third part, it is argued that from the perspective of Hausdorff’s philosophical-geometrical reflections, this very same problem seems to find a more radical application in Helmholtz’s or Poincaré’s thought experiments on the impossibility of distinguishing distorted copies of our universe from the original one. I draw the conclusion that in Hausdorff’s philosophical work, which has received scholarly attention only recently, one can find not only an original attempt to frame these classical arguments from a set-theoretical point of view, but also the possibility of considering the history of philosophy of geometry from an uncommon perspective, where especially the significance of Kant’s infamous appeal to “intuition” can be judged by more appropriate standards. (shrink)