The impact of Kant’s philosophical work on the different directions of the development of science and culture in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries is so great that posterity will undoubtedly not hesitate to establish a parallel between it and the millenarian influence that Plato and Aristotle have exerted on Western history and culture. The breath of his theoretical and practical influence during more than two centuries surpasses that of any other figure of modernity. This is especially the case of the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions since their origin, in their debates with scientific positivism, and during the complex course of their subsequent development. 

 Indeed, Kant inspires the first defenders of the formal sciences and the human sciences from 1870 onwards: in the schools of Baden and Marburg and in the development of contemporary neo-criticism with Dilthey’s hermeneutics and later with Cassirer’s critical symbolism. The first gives a decisive boost to the “critique of historical reason” as well as to human and cultural sciences. The second highlights the role of Kant’s transcendental imagination in the constitution of symbolic thought, language and art. 

The emergence of Husserl’s phenomenology in 1900 and its subsequent development draws on both neo-Kantian schools, as well as Dilthey. A little later, Scheler, inspired by Husserl’s concept of a material a priori, proposes a “material ethics of values” in critical dialogue with Kantian formalism, while Heidegger—in debate with Kant the “metaphysician”—is responsible for the turn from transcendental phenomenology towards a hermeneutics of historical existence, which gains new impetus both with Gadamer and, later, with Ricoeur. Several other figures in phenomenology and hermeneutics represent ramifications of this strand, such as Hannah Arendt and her sui generis reappropriation of Kant’s “reflective judgment” in the realm of practical philosophy. 

Even today, Kant is an unavoidable reference for “Continental” philosophers interested in exploring the philosophical-epistemological foundations of the physical and/or cognitive sciences. 

In short, Kant’s work continues to be a philosophical reference for the main reflections in current science and culture. For this reason, the XX Journeys on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics of the Peruvian Circle of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics is dedicated this year to the commemoration of Emmanuel Kant’s 300 birth anniversary, and his legacy.

Keynotes:

Prof. Dennis Schmidt – On the Feeling of Life. Kant, Gadamer, Derrida

Prof. Steven G. Crowell – Heidegger, Kant, and the Phenomenology of Finite Reason

Prof. Thomas Nenon – The Significance of Heidegger’s Reading of Schematism in Kant’s Transcendental Philosophy 

Link to register for the Zoom link: https://cef.pucp.edu.pe/eventos/xx-jornadas-peruanas-de-fenomenologia-y-hermeneutica-estelas-de-kant-su-legado-en-la-filosofia-continental-contemporanea/

Steven G. Crowell (Rice University) – Heidegger, Kant, and the Phenomenology of Finite Reason

Heidegger’s subordination of reason to Sorge in Being and Time has exposed him to the charge of irrationalism. Against this view, I argue that Being and Time offers a “normativity-first” account in which reason, as reason-giving is a constitutive demand on authentic selfhood. Examining the rejection of neo-Kantianism’s equation of reason with logic in Heidegger’s 1929 Kantbuch, I explain the threads that connect what Heidegger calls “pure sensible reason” to his extensive phenomenological account of the “everyday” and “authentic” modes of Dasein’s care-structure. As authenticity’s discursive mode, the Ruf des Gewissens is Dasein’s portal into normative space. The structure of normative space is analyzed in Heidegger’s essay Vom Wesen des Grundes, where it is shown that Dasein’s response to the call involves answerability to others (logon didonai) for what it holds to be best in its practical life. In contrast to philosophical rationalism, however, such a normativity-first account of reason, like Kant’s transcendental account, must reject the principle of sufficient reason as “transcendental Schein.”

Thomas Nenon (University of Memphis) – The Significance of Heidegger’s Emphasis on Schematism in his Reading of Kant

One of the important insights of Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is his emphasis on the crucial role that the schematism plays in Kant’s transcendental philosophy.  I will argue that this interpretation is important because of the way that it can help provide a more compelling reading of the Critique of Pure Reason that can help resolve some key issues that traditional approaches that rely primarily on the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories fail to sufficiently address, including discussions about appearances vs. things-in-themselves, the relationship between the world as subjectively constituted to the actual world, and the limits of subjective activity in constituting that world.  I will also try to explain how Heidegger comes to place the nature of temporality and the imagination in such close proximity.  In each case, I will also use Heidegger’s hint towards the end of his Kant lecture course that his reading of Kant was guided in important ways by insights from Husserl’s phenomenology and show how Husserlian positions from the VI. Logical Investigation and his lecture on internal time consciousness are taken up by Heidegger and put to positive use in his interpretation of Kant.

Dennis Schmidt (Western Sydney University) – On the Feeling of Life. Kant, Gadamer, Derrida

“Die schöne Dinge zeigen an, dass der Mensch in die Welt passe.” – Kant, Reflexionen

Gadamer, Adorno, Lyotard, Arendt, and Derrida have all found inspiration in Kant’s Critique of Judgment—indeed, much of what is most original in the Continental tradition of philosophy after Husserl and Heidegger is indebted to the insights one finds in Kant’s work. The third Critique’s most compelling insight is that an experience marked by its relation to a quite peculiar form of pleasure is the first intimation of an a priori orienting us to what is best described as an ethical sense. Kant’s claim is simple: that there is a feeling, an aesthetic experience, that is utterly subjective and yet, when properly understood, is experienced as both universal and necessary: it is the “feeling of life itself” and “it is the feeling that thinking feels when it is aware of itself.” The intention of this paper is to think through—in Kant and with reference to some of his successors (in particular, Gadamer)—the meaning, significance, and consequences of this notion of the feeling of life that defines the pleasure we take in beauty. It also leads, as Kant himself will argue, to a sense of an ethical sense (§ 59) that can only be thought “symbolically,” exposing a “moral feeling” that defines who we are.

Juan Gonzales Hurtado (PUCP/UPC/ISET Juan XXIII) – Kant and Derrida facing the «incalculability» of life. Reflecting on Dignity in Times of the Market.

We have just experienced a global pandemic, in which most of us still live without being aware of the relevance of protecting the value of dignity collectively. We must reflect on the pandemic’s context in relation to the Market and its neoliberal logic. In today’s society, benefit, outcome, and utility take precedence over any moral value, such as freedom, dignity, or the right to have rights (principles that an author like Kant claimed were the tasks of reason, that also delineate the Western international legal framework). Jacques Derrida warns us that a state becomes “rogue” when the order that prevails is the abstract, but not the factual, functioning of the law. That is why we ask ourselves: can reason still account for itself in an era marked by the Market? Is tolerance already depleted, and is hospitality the only form of response to current inequality we can think of? What kind of praxis is required in a time like the present?

Franklin Ibáñez Blancas (UNMSM/PUCP) – ¿Only Rational Subjects  possess Dignity? 

Kant’s moral theory continues to be the one that provides the strongest support for the notion of dignity, the cornerstone of contemporary moral and legal systems. Kant claims that dignity belongs to all human beings as ends in themselves. However, his arguments seem dedicated to justifying the dignity of “rational subjects”. Depending on how we define this category, it could imply that perhaps not all human beings fit in this definition as some seem to lack rationality, for example, those with profound cognitive disabilities or anencephaly. The contribution explores this problem in Kantian reasoning.

Martín Rosado Osorio (UNMSM) – Heidegger and Husserl on Sensibility according to Kant

In the Transcendental Aesthetics of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes the conditions of possibility of knowledge on the basis of sensibility. This is the sensible condition by which the material content of sensation is apprehended. Later, in the twentieth century, Heidegger publishes Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. In his view, Kant’s valuable interpretation of sensibility adopts an ontological view of sensibility, without falling back into empiricism. Thus, Kant’s contribution is to forge an ontological perspective of sensibility and passivity. Faced with this ontology of transcendental aesthetics, as interpreted by Heidegger, we ask ourselves whether it is possible to restore the empirical contents (sensations), sensory organs, and embodiment in the analyses of sensibility, unlike the Heideggerian thesis, without falling back on psychological empiricism. Precisely, Edmund Husserl’s thought is valuable in offering another way of looking at sensibility and the passive sphere without excluding its “material” aspect. This Husserlian material phenomenology is offered in his analyses of passive synthesis.

David Yáñez Baptista (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) – The Kantian sense of philosophizing according to Ortega

From a neglected Orteguian background, I would like to vindicate the current relevance of Kant’s distinction between the scholastic and mundane conceptions of philosophy. In both cases, philosophy appears as a living action, and it lets itself be interpreted as such from Kant’s practical doctrine. Hence, the scholastic notion relates to hypothetical imperatives, while the mundane notion is linked to categorical ones—and, therefore, to the interest, duty, and dignity of philosophy. The interesting thing is that Ortega finds in this mundane notion of thought, with its renowned questions, the most authentic way of philosophizing. It is not opposed to scholastic rigor, which it needs, but only to purely scholastic philosophizing. My aim is to show, hand in hand with the Spanish philosopher, that Kant’s response to the question of the utility of scholastic philosophy, so frequent nowadays, is still fully valid. In this sense, to specify the vital justification of the philosophical task is the best way to continue defending today this vocation, for the fulfillment of which Kant was born three centuries ago.

Claudia Laos Igreda (GIFS-PUCP) – The Dialogical Imprint of Kant’s Mediation on Error and Conflict

Authors like Hannah Arendt (1982) and later Onora O’Neill (1989), albeit their undeniable differences, have respectively developed influential readings of Kant’s aesthetics and of his moral and theoretical philosophy, allowing us to assert that both the point of view of the other and the public and communitarian, reveal themselves as a transversal and inseparable condition of Kantian philosophy. The present contribution adds to these readings an interpretation of the application of rules, in order to avoid errors in the solution of the antinomy of reason, as a critical dialogical exercise of human universal reason.

Maribel Cuenca Espinoza (PUCP) – Human Finitude and Nature’s Ubiquity in Heidegger’s Thought 

At certain moments of Heidegger’s thought, a peculiar and suggestive sense of nature appears that differs from nature as an entity that presents itself, or as an object of scientific research. The “naturality of nature” (Natürlichkeit der Natur) directs us to that omnipresence that seizes and imprisons us, thus un-covering our vulnerability and finitude. However, this “natural nature,” presents itself and challenges us in the “epoch” of metaphysics, that is, in a stage of (Being’s) history in which the natural sciences’ concept of nature dominates. Starting from the above, this presentation focuses on analyzing the scope of “natural nature” in metaphysics, highlighting its finitude. This leads us to pay attention to the metaphysics conceived by Immanuel Kant and to specify how it “exposes” nature by discovering human finitude, and, at the same time, shelters it. From this, the contribution of Kant’s metaphysics to the problem of the comprehension of Being will be shown. 

Juan Pablo Cotrina Tellez (PUCP) – Interpretation and critique Kant’s philosophy from Sartrean phenomenology: consciousness and morality

Sartrean phenomenology, since its breakthrough in 1936—year in which The Transcendence of the Ego was published—has considered Kant as an important philosophical interlocutor. Said importance is clearly expressed in two key thematic axes: consciousness and morality. Regarding consciousness, Sartre debates with Kant about the role of the I within it, above all, focused on the question: ¿Does the I render possible the unity of consciousness, or is it because consciousness is one and the same that the I can emerge? Regarding morality, Sartre criticizes Kant for conceiving it separated from the specific situation of each social entity. That is, for Sartre, Kantian morality sacrifices human facticity in order to safeguard a rationality that can be subjected to universal principles. Following these two thematic axes, in the following presentation we try to explain how Sartre’s reading and interpretation of Kant’s philosophy is carried out, because only then will we see its true importance within Sartre’s phenomenological proposal.

Rafael Campos García Calderón (UNMSM) – Morphology of the transcendental illusion. Dogmatic metaphysics, philosophy of history according to Immanuel Kant

Our work attempts to show how the disappearance of the transcendental illusion from the field of natural sciences brought with it its necessary reappearance in the field of spiritual sciences. First, we analyze the concept of transcendental illusion, introduced by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, regarding the incorrect use of the ideas of pure reason in the process of knowledge. Second, we review the concept of madness, proposed by Kant in his Anthropology in a Pragmatic Sense to describe a specific type of mental disturbance, resulting from a type of transcendental illusion. Finally, we review the Kantian Opuscules on history in order to verify the presence of transcendental illusion within spiritual sciences, specifically in his own philosophy of history. Thus, we will compare three manifestations of the phenomenon of transcendental illusion in order to show the modes that the same gnoseological phenomenon manifests itself in three different types of thought: a scientific one,a  pathological one, and an utopian one.

Martín Córdova Pacheco (UNMSM) – Kant and the Italian Theory: Roberto Esposito’s reading of the categorical imperative

In this presentation, we will deal with the main guidelines of the interpretation carried out by Roberto Esposito in his book Communitas: Origin and Destiny of the Community, regarding the Kantian categorical imperative, and within the framework of a reconstruction of the history of modern political thought’s oblivion of the community. Thus Esposito places Kant halfway between Rousseau and Heidegger, to the extent that, unlike Rousseau, the common withdraws from any kind of possible political praxis (for Esposito, the categorical imperative is fully unrealizable due to its transcendentality), but, in the same gesture, it already anticipates an ontological condition of community where subjectivity is erased (reflected in the formal and universal character of the imperative). Finally, a critical assessment of Esposito’s proposal will be made.

Mariana Chu García (PUCP) – The Gesinnung and the Role of the Example in Scheler’s Ethics

In the case of Scheler’s work, Kant’s legacy can be detected in more than one theme and problem. But, when it comes to ethics, this legacy forms a fabric that, tighter in some areas and looser in others, structures the task of founding that philosophical discipline. Convinced that Kant is the one who has made the most progress in this task, Scheler lists in the “Preliminary Observation” to his Ethics eight assumptions that, from his phenomenological point of view, led the Enlightenment philosopher to reject all material ethics.  The latter’s goal is to replace those assumptions with ethical principles phenomenologically obtained, but within the framework of an ontology. In this presentation, I will focus on the third Kantian assumption that Scheler formulates as follows: “All material Ethics are [necessarily] Ethics of success, and only a formal Ethics can claim the disposition of mind [Gesinnung], or the willing inherent to that disposition of mind, as primitive repositories of good and bad values” (GW II, 31 [49]). Based on the Schelerian criticism of this assumption, I will try to show, first, the relationship between Gesinnung and personality, and, second, the role of the example in ethics.