Ricerc@Sapienza

Dans certains articles (112 et suivants) des Passions de l’âme, Descartes définissait déjà les expressions corporelles des passions comme des
« signes », encadrant ainsi déjà la question dans un horizon sémiotique. Le choix se retrouve aussi chez Kant, qui emploie, pour envisager la
question, le terme de caractéristique anthropologique. La thèse que nous voulons soutenir ici est que chez Descartes, mais surtout chez Kant

Ontologie als transzendentale Anthropologie: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik um 1775

Come attivare il fondo della percezione? Come attivare, cioè, uno scardinamento del tempo che non sia quello subìto quotidianamente e insensatamente, ma che costituisca una sua ripresa riflessa, una sua simbolizzazione, una sua elaborazione feconda? Si tratterebbe di far lavorare di conserva una capacità di abbandonarsi senza controllo ad analogie inedite, capaci di creare cortocircuiti tra tempi eterogenei, e un controllo vigile che le contenga in un orizzonte di senso discutibile e comunicabile, per quanto fratturato e precario, e abitato da un nucleo inespugnabile.

The journal Beyträge zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophie beym Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts, whose six volumes were edited by K. L. Reinhold from 1801 until 1803, gives in some of its essays an outlook of the philosophy at the beginning of 19th century. Reinhold’s point of view is driven by his conversion to logical realism and consequently critically turned against Kantian transcendental philosophy as well as Fichtian and Schellinghian Idealism.

Two terms in the Kantian lexicon derives from the Latin metaphysical tradition of the res: Realität (Reality) and Wirklichkeit (Actuality or Effectiveness). The first one expresses one of the categories of quality and in the Kantian table it corresponds to affirmative judgements. The second one represents the scheme of the modal category of existence (Dasein), that is – according to Kant’s words – «existence in a determinate time».

Kants Schrift zur Anthropologie von 1798 beginnt mit einer Unterscheidung zwischen einer Anthropologie „in physiologischer Hinsicht“ und einer Anthropologie „in pragmatischer Hinsicht“. Über diese Zweiteilung in pragmatischer und physiologischer Anthropologie hinaus taucht in Kants Werk jedoch, wenn auch nur ganz am Rande, eine andere mögliche Art von Anthropologie auf.

In a reflection forming part of Kant’s Handschriftlicher Nachlass that has been traced back by Adickes to the years between 1776 and 1778 there occurs a phrase which occurs nowhere else in the entire body of Kant’s works: “transcendental anthropology” (anthropologia transcendentalis, no. 903 in AA XV, 395). Every scholar and scientist, Kant maintains here, must take care to avoid becoming a “cyclops”, that is to say, someone who observes the phenomena that concern him with, as it were, a “single eye”.

Somatology is an ‘invention’ of early modern Protestant Scholasticism and is mentioned by Immanuel Kant. Consistently with the way in which this discipline was considered in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, somatology is for Kant the discipline that has to do with material physical objects and therefore with ‘bodies’ conceived in a broader sense. But somatology is also for him the counterpart of pneumatology or psychology, as sciences dealing with the spirits of the soul.

La tesi espressa dal titolo di questo contributo sembra porsi in esplicita contraddizione con la tradizione del pensiero religioso in generale, cristiano in particolare e forse per alcuni aspetti soprattutto cattolico, secondo cui si è veramente liberi, si guadagna piena libertà, nel momento in cui si àncora la libertà stessa a Dio. È Dio infatti, e solo Lui, ad essere vera e piena libertà. Non nell’indipendenza da Dio, dunque, ma, al contrario, nel legame e nell’unione con con lui, si raggiunge la libertà.