Ricerc@Sapienza

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». It is worth notice that Realität has no proper scheme and it rather seems to express the general functioning of schematism: that is, the «realization» of categories. To be able to function and to apply to phaenomena, in fact, categories must be restricted and adapted to the forms of sensibility Schemes can therefore be interpreted as plastic and pragmatic functions and «reality» in its broader sense and in its general meaning can be understood as the product of this operations. This interpretation can be confirmed by following the main arguments of the early debate on the «thing-in-itself» among the first Kantian scholars. But this interpretation may be confirmed by a yet unknown possible source of the Kantian doctrine of schematism: the architectural treatise by Leonhard Christoph Sturm. In those pages, the idea materialis is the plastic figure used by architects as a model for a construction. And the tradition of the idea materialis is an important reference for the development of the Kantian Schematism.