Kant in Finland
Milla Vaha, Hemmo Laiho and Markus Nikkarla*
The University of the
South Pacific, Fiji Islands
University of
Turku, Finland
Abstract
In the editorial note, we
shortly outline the reception of Kant’s philosophy in Finland and how Kant’s philosophy became an academic topic from the late 18th century onwards. We
also provide some details about the translations of Kant’s works into
Finnish. Finally, we introduce the contributions to the special section on
Kantian studies in Finland.
Keywords
Kant,
Kantianism, Finland
Abstrakti
Toimittajien
saatteessamme kuvailemme lyhyesti Kantin filosofian saamaa vastaanottoa
Suomessa ja miten Kantin filosofiasta tuli akateemisen kiinnostuksen kohde
1700-luvun lopulta alkaen. Lisäksi kerromme Kantin teosten käännöksistä suomen
kielelle. Lopuksi esittelemme tämän päivän suomalaiselle Kant-tutkimukselle
osoitetun erikoisosion sisältämät tutkimusartikkelit.
Asiasanat
Kant,
kantilaisuus, Suomi
In
a letter to a friend in 1795 Henrik Gabriel Porthan, a Finnish Enlightenment
thinker who became a conspicuous critic of Kant’s work in both his lectures and
dissertations, wrote the following regarding the German philosopher’s work:
Its mysterious language and
own terminology, which can be understood only by the adepti, has excluded me
from it; I am already too old to waste my time for it, and so I believe that I
can get along with my old philosophy […] I really am afraid that whole this
seething enthusiasm for Kantianism will suffer the same fate as Cartesianism
and Wolffianism before it, namely that when it has made a noise for a while, it
will calm down and be put aside. (Quoted in Oittinen 2012)
While
Kantianism was not well perceived by all (Klinge et al. 1987, 724), his
philosophical ideas, especially those related to morality and religion, soon
found firm support in Northern Europe, including Finland – which at the time
was the eastern part of Sweden.
The
first “Finnish pro-Kantian dissertation” (Oittinen 2012), De principio ultimo officiorum hominis, was published by Frans Michael Franzén in 1798.
Other early writings on Kant’s philosophy include Anders Johan Lagus’s Immanuelis Kant de tempore doctrina (1804) and Fredrik Bergbom’s Dissertatio
metaphysica Kantianorum de re in se (Ding an sich) doctrinam breviter examinans
(1811). These academic works were publicly examined in the Royal Academy of
Turku, the
sole university in Finland until the early 20th century, when
Finland gained its independence (after being a part of the Russian Empire from
1809 to 1917).
While
Turku (Åbo in Swedish, Aboa in Latin) – which Kant mentions in his 1756
article on the Great Lisbon earthquake to indicate how far away from Lisbon the
tremors were felt (AA 1:436) – might be considered remote in the days of the
horse and carriage, its Academy, founded in 1640, was a well-established
university at the turn of the 19th century. New intellectual ideas
like the philosophical movements of Cartesianism, Leibniz-Wolffianism and
Kantianism came quickly to the region, perhaps most often through Uppsala
University in Sweden. Moreover, Turku is not far geographically from
Königsberg; the Baltic Sea connecting many of the northern European
universities from early on.
Today,
despite Porthan’s prognostication, Kant’s legacy holds firm in philosophical
education and research in Finland’s many modern universities. Since Franzén’s
thesis, the pile of Finnish PhD and Master’s theses on Kantian philosophy has
indeed grown high. Several Finnish philosophers have been inspired by Kant’s
work, among them influential figures like Georg Henrik von Wright and Jaakko
Hintikka. More recently, the University of Turku has been particularly active
in Kantian studies, largely thanks to Olli Koistinen who also supervised the
first ever translation of the Critique of Pure Reason into Finnish.
It
is telling, we think, that the complex language of Kant has been translated
into the complex language of Finnish, the most recent comprehensive
contributions being the Finnish language editions of all the three Critiques.
The Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Markus Nikkarla, one of the
contributors to this issue, and Kreeta Ranki, was published in 2013, followed
by the Critique of Practical Reason in 2016 (also translated by
Nikkarla), and in 2018 the Critique of Judgement, translated by Risto
Pitkänen. Of these, only the second Critique had been available in
Finnish before; the first translation, by Jalmari Salomaa, a seminal figure in
early Finnish Kant scholarship, came out in 1931 together with the first
Finnish translation of Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. The
first of Kant’s books to appear in Finnish was, however, Perpetual Peace, in which Kant mentions Finns as a
group of people with their distinguished language living in the northernmost
part of Europe (AA 8:364). The Finnish translation of Perpetual Peace
was published in 1922.
When we first
began to put this special selection together, we wanted to highlight the
variety of contemporary Finnish – and more broadly Nordic – Kant scholarship.
The purpose was not to exercise any form of nationalism, which would have
jarred with Kant’s cosmopolitan vision, but to offer Finnish scholars a space
to illustrate the richness of Kantian scholarship in the 21st
century. Con-textos Kantianos therefore provides an excellent platform
for such an academic exercise: a truly international and, importantly, open
access, refereed journal. The papers submitted to this special section
demonstrate that Kantian philosophy – from politics to ethics and metaphysics –
continues to be an active subject of research among Finnish scholars.
In recent years, Kant’s conception of space has been, and continues to
be, an area of special interest among scholars in Turku. Markus Nikkarla
touches this issue in his article, which focuses on Kant’s conception of the
extralogical grounds of existence in the New Elucidation. Nikkarla
examines the articulation, in this early text, that God contains the grounds
both of the existence of things and their interaction and change, arguing that
Kant’s conception of these ideas implies the view, which he later explicitly
held, that existence is not a predicate of things.
Kant’s account of perception has always been the subject of active
interest and even more so in the recent years. In his article Hemmo Laiho
proposes that, according to Kant’s phenomenologically plausible view, the
cognitive functions of sense perception are twofold: on the one hand, that of
singling out things; on the other, gaining perceptual information about the
configuration of their features. Laiho examines the distinction between the two
functions in relation to Kant’s notions of ‘manifold’ and ‘synthesis’ in order
to explicate the theoretical role of perceptually locatable particular things
(or distinguishables, as Laiho calls them) in Kant’s philosophical system.
Pärttyli Rinne
explores the role of love in global politics and reflects on Kant’s work
through John Rawls’ and Martha Nussbaum’s discussion of moral psychology. Rinne
argues that Kant’s understanding of love as a duty toward everyone helps us to
investigate and articulate non-communitarian and non-nationalist feelings of
love and empathy towards The Other. Kant’s practical and universal ethics
provide background theory that is useful in utilizing moral psychology for the
analysis of global politics. Rinne acknowledges the limitations of Kant’s
ethics, but also demonstrates the possibility of culturally sensitive,
universally sharable attitudes of love.
Sami Pihlström
continues the exploration of the human condition by offering a comparison of
Kant with the American pragmatist William James (1842–1910). Pihlström
argues that James was much more of a Kantian than he was willing to admit.
Pihlström points out, more specifically, that both Kant and James can be seen
as sharing a pessimistic conception of humanity, which in turn is perfectly
compatible with meliorism (i.e. the idea that progress towards the better is
possible). Pihlström evidences this through an exploration of the two critical
philosophers’ views of religion.
In his contribution to this issue, Lauri Kallio examines Arvi(d)
Grotenfelt’s (1863–1941) reaction to Heinrich Rickert’s (1863–1936) views on
history as science, historical knowledge and historical values. Kallio argues
that in many respects Grotenfelt was cautiously critical of Rickert, one of the
leading neo-Kantians of the time, and that some of his own views are more akin
to those of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911). Grotenfelt, a Helsinki-based professor
of philosophy who was heavily influenced by Kant’s ethics, was a pioneering
figure in the philosophy of history in Finland.
References
Bergbom, F.
(1811), Dissertatio metaphysica Kantianorum de re in se (Ding an sich)
doctrinam breviter examinans, avaliable online at http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:fv-01469
Franzén, F. M. (1798), De
principio ultimo officiorum hominis, available online at http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:fv-11845
Klinge et al. (1987),
Helsingin yliopisto 1640–1990. Ensimmäinen osa. Kuninkaallinen Turun
akatemia 1640–1808, Helsinki: Otava.
Lagus,
A. J. (1804), Immanuëlis Kant de
tempore doctrina, breviter dilucidata, available online at http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fd2014-00005602
Oittinen, V. (2012),
“Philosophy in Finland 1200-1850”, in I. Pitkäranta (ed.), Ajatuksen kulku,
suomalaiset filosofit maailmalla – maailman filosofit Suomessa, available
online at https://filosofia.fi/tallennearkisto/tekstit/6300
