2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The hidden connection between Kant and scholasticism
| Project/Area Number |
18K00019
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| Research Institution | Keio University |
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Principal Investigator |
エアトル ヴォルフガング 慶應義塾大学, 文学部(三田), 教授 (30407150)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Things in themselves / Transcendental idealism / Metaphysics / Philosophical theology / Immanuel Kant |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In my research this year I have drawn on Kant’s account of the divine intellect for an interpretation of the distinction of things in themselves and appearances which can accommodate Kant’s two seemingly incompatible models of a two-aspect- and a two-world-view. Kant’s conception of the intellectus archetypus is shown to be surprisingly similar to that of Aquinas and other Thomist scholastics who subscribe to the doctrine that divine cognition is idea-based, albeit of course not in the technical sense of ideas of reason pertinent in Kant’s oeuvre according to which ideas are concepts. The ‘old way of ideas’ is then identified as a device for rendering coherent Kant’s twofold account of noumena in the Critique of Pure Reason leading to a new distinction of different types of noumenal entities. The thesis of there being such a variety of types of noumenal entities is then identified as instrumental for the accommodating interpretation of the distinction of things in themselves and appearances to succeed.
Moreover, my book on the guarantee of perpetual peace has finally been published by Cambridge University Press.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
I participated in the XIIIth International Kant Congress (entitled "The Court of Reason") in Oslo, Norway and gave a presentation there (“Varieties of Noumena”) Also, I attended the first meeting of the workshop series “Kant on Reality” which I organized together with my colleague, Prof. Eric Watkins, from the University of California in San Diego. The workshop took place in Mainz, Germany. Moreover, I chaired three guest lectures by Prof Watkins at Keio University.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
As outlined in my plans for the overall project, I will now turn to the argument for the thesis of the third antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason. One of the main problems of this argument is that it seems to cover freedom only in a cosmological sense, namely insofar as freedom is shown to be indispensable when trying to account for the existence of the world. In the resolution of the third antinomy, however, Kant is discussing human freedom exclusively. One important question is therefore how these two topics are connected. I will approach this question by drawing on the notion of concursus. Another question is whether Kant uses premises in his argument which he does not mention explicitly, presumably because he thinks they are obvious. I presume that one of these premises is the thesis of the first antinomy, i.e. the claim that the world is temporarily finite.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Planned to use as a part of travelling cost, but it didn't work till the end of the academic year. It will be used combined with this year's grant. Some traveling costs could be covered by a German University.
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