In this paper I present a new solution to the so-called ‘neglected alternative’ objection against Kant’s argument for transcendental idealism. According to this objection, Kant does not give sufficient justification for his claim that not only are space and time forms of our intuition but they also fail to be things in themselves or properties thereof. I first discuss a proposal by Willaschek and Allais, who try to defend Kant against this charge by building on his account of a priori (...) intuition, and argue that it is insufficient to meet the objection in its full force. I then present my own solution to the problem. It is based on a reconstruction of Kant’s account of properties of appearances, and tries to show that this account implies that spatio-temporal properties could in principle not pertain both to appearances and to things in themselves. (shrink)

This paper provides a novel reconstruction of Kant’s argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. This reconstruction relies on two main contentions: first, that Kant accepts the then-ubiquitous view that all cognition is either from grounds or consequences, a view he props up by drawing a distinction between logical and real grounds; second, that Kant, like most of his contemporaries, holds that our representations are the most immediate grounds of our cognition. By stressing these elements, the most threatening objection (...) to Kant’s argument can be avoided, namely, the claim that Kant ignores the possibility that our representations of space and time are subjective in origin, but objective as regards their applicability. My reconstruction shows that this so-called neglected alternative objection is based on a conceptual confusion about the nature of a priori cognition. (shrink)

Neo-Kantianism emerged over the course of the 1860s and it occupied a leading position in the German universities from the 1870s until the First World War. Demands for getting "back to Kant" had become common since the early 1860s, and these demands were discussed in the meetings of the Philosophical Society of Berlin (Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin; PGB), which was the international organization of Hegelians. In this paper I address some reactions among the PGB members to the 1860s Kant revival. (...) The journal "Der Gedanke", the organ of the PGB, reported closely how Kant returned to the spotlight of German philosophy. The reactions of the PGB members to the Kant revival was not only critical. Over the course of the 1860s the interest on Kant among the members grew little by little. (shrink)

Viktor D. Kudryavtsev-Platonov is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian religious-academic philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century whose theory of cognition bears an imprint of the Kantian theoretical philosophy. Kudryavtsev was not only thoroughly familiar with the Königsberg thinker’s work, but offered a critically reinterpreted version of Kant’s teaching on space, time and categories of understanding. But was the Russian philosopher original in his reading and critique of Kant? In his later works Kudryavtsev often cites (...) the works of Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg whose works turn out to be very close to the Russian philosopher. Could it be that Kudryavtsev read Kant through Trendelenburg’s optics? To answer this question consistently I give outlines of Trendelenburg’s and Kudryavtsev’s theories of cognition and compare their views on the basis of the sources. I then draw on archive materials to characterise Kudryavtsev’s acquaintance with the works of Kant and Trendelenburg. It turns out that Kudryavtsev was well-versed in Kant’s philosophical ideas already in the early years of his teaching activities — but not from primary sources, but largely through German historical-philosophical renderings. I establish similarities between the teachings of Trendelenburg and Kudryavtsev on space, time and the categories of understanding and their critique of the relevant Kantian teaching. Finally, Kudryavtsev’s early manuscripts attest to his acquaintance with Trendelenburg’s ideas. I conclude that Trendelenburg influenced Kudryavtsev’s own theory of cognition, a fact that should be borne in mind when reading the Russian philosopher’s epistemological works. (shrink)