Abstract

In this article, I go against some interpretations of the “Träume eines Geistersehers” that read this work as the outcome of a profound crisis in Kant’s thought, triggered by the reading of Swedenborg and ending with the complete abandonment of his entire philosophical production. To do so, I highlight the continuity, on the methodological level, between the “Träume” and the texts of the 1760s that precede it, in particular with the “Deutlichkeit”. Having clarified some of the principles of the analytical method developed by Kant in the latter text of 1762, especially the role played by language in determining the content of the concept, I show how, in the “Träume”, Kant employs this method for analyzing the concept of spirit. Nevertheless, I take into account the specific epistemology adopted by Kant in the “Träume” and the effect it has on the relationship between method and metaphysics, the reconfiguration of which can be observed in the pages of the “Träume”. In contrast to the narrative that paints Kant as skeptical about metaphysics, I thus show how metaphysics was rather subject to a conceptual transformation that prepares the outcomes of Kant’s later thought.