2023 Fiscal Year Annual Research 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 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Transcendental idealism / Scholasticism / Kant / Modern Philosophy |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2023, I have completed the research project, published the paper version of my Mary-Gregor-Lecture which was delivered in 2023 at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Denver and submitted another paper due to be published in a collection of papers on Kant's philosophy of religion from Felix-Meiner-Verlag. Moreover, I am now in the final stages of finishing two more manuscripts, one on an attempt to augment the so-called metaphysical two-aspects-reading of the distinction of things in themselves and appearances, the other on the pitfalls of trying to domesticate Kant's position on the compatibility of free will and causal determinism.
In the final year of this project, it has become clear that Kant's philosophy is indeed heavily indebted to the legacy of certain early modern scholastic philosophers, most notably Luis de Molina. Of course, Kant's endorsement of these doctrines is complex and sophisticated, and does not undercut his doctrine that we cannot have theoretical cognition of objects beyond the limits of space and time. Rather, it is the rationally justified assumptions short of theoretical cognition which often have a scholastic twist in Kant, most notably his conceptions of the so-called "intelligible character", the center-piece of his take on compatibility, and of divine cognition in its importance for understanding his key distinction of things in themselves and appearances. After all, Kant's conception of things as they are in themselves is indeed tied to a divine perspective on reality.
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