Con-Textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy
Con-Textos Kantianos aims at boosting the philological and critical research on Kant studies, considering also actual discussions on Kant's thought. That is the reason why its heading hints to contexts with texts. Kant shall be the main focus of the journal, which will tackle subjects such as Moral and Political Philosophy, History of Ideas, Philosophy of Right, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Education, Aesthetics, Anthropology, Metaphysics and Epistemology, Human Rights, Social Policy, Theories of Justice and Cosmopolitanism. CTK aims at being an international and cosmopolitan inspired e-journal, where the Spanish language receives equal acknowledgement as English, French, German, Italian and Portuguese do. The main purposes of the journal are to enhance the development of a Kant scholarship network at the Latin American scale and to tighten the links between research groups already consolidated in different countries and languages. The editorial team, which gathers Kant scholars from Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Spain, will certainly ease the fulfillment of both purposes
A esfera pública entre a Aufklärung e o antagonismo - a prioridade da filosofia social de Kant na reflexão sobre a história
Neste trabalho, procurarei explicitar qual a relação entre as caracterizações substancialmente distintas da esfera pública efetuadas por Kant. Nos escritos sobre a Ilustração é enfatizada a componente produtiva deste espaço e são identificadas as condições que permitem fomentar um progresso social e político. Por outro lado, nos opúsculos sobre a ideia de uma história universal, é antes enfatizada a sua dinâmica antagónica. À primeira vista, a história teleológica segundo um plano de natureza parece relegar para segundo plano o papel da esfera pública e do uso público da razão. Porém, dado o estatuto epistémico da filosofia da história, procurarei evidenciar que, pelo contrário, esta ideia regulativa apenas possui significância filosófica devido aos efeitos da sua difusão pública. Assim, aquilo que motivou a elaboração de uma filosofia a história foi antes o potencial político do pensamento público e, como tal, a teleologia da história é secundária face à conceção da esfera pública.
Derechos de autor 2024 Con-Textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy
Derechos de autor 2026 Con-Textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy
The Artistic is Political. Review of: Susan Meld Shell, The Politics of Beauty: A Study of Kant’s Critique of Taste. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2022. ISBN 9781009011808
Interview with Luca Fonnesu, conducted by Sandra V. Palermo, in which the Italian philosopher discusses how his philosophical research has evolved since his university days, what the philosophical and political climate was like during his formative years, and how his philosophical interests intersected with Kantian thought. The interview also discusses Kant’s importance for contemporary moral philosophy and epistemology, the role of philosophical societies and the relationship between philosophy and history of philosophy.
Kant and the Puzzle of Respect: a Volitional Account of Achtung. Review of: Jorg Nöller, Kant on Respect (Achtung), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 66 pp.ISBN 978-1-009-51107-0.
Between Derivation and Independence: Testing the Moral Roots of Kantian Right. Review of: Brecher, Martin & Hirsch Philipp-Alexander (eds.), Law and Morality in Kant. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2026, 342 pp. ISBN: 9781009291996.
Las posibilidad de la historia de la filosofía: de un nuevo Kant. Reseña de: Macarena Marey, Voluntad omnilateral y finitud de la tierra, La Cebra, Buenos Aires, 2020, 335 pp.
We Need Ideas Like Kant's for the Climate Crisis. Review of: Zachary Vereb, Kant and Environmental Philosophy: The Climate Crisis and the Imperative ofSustainability. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 274 pp. ISBN: 9781009664921
Between formal wrongs and fatal truths. Kant’s defense of truthfulness as a perfect duty. Review of: Jens Timmermann, Kant and the Supposed Right to Lie, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 216 pp.
Belief, Sincerity, and Certainty in Kant’s “Theodicy” Essay
In this brief paper I offer an interpretation of what “sincerity” and “certainty” mean in the context of Kant’s discussion of the story of Job in the “Theodicy” essay. I argue that, for Kant, the encounter with evil ideally leads various commitments to become reflective.
Reconsidering Kant’s Copernican Revolution: From Synthetic A Priori Knowledge to the Metaphysical Status of the Noumenon
This paper critically examines Michael J. Olson’s interpretation of Kant’s Copernican Revolution as a transformation of the object of metaphysics into synthetic a priori knowledge with a twofold structure. While granting Olson’s insight that the Copernican Revolution is not merely a perspectival reversal but a substantive reconfiguration of metaphysics modeled on the methodological revolutions in mathematics and physics, I argue that his account remains incomplete. In particular, Olson’s interpretation risks reducing Kant’s critical project to an epistemological enterprise. By focusing on Kant’s phenomenon–noumenon distinction, I show that transcendental idealism involves unavoidable metaphysical commitments that cannot be captured solely in terms of synthetic a priori knowledge. Although noumena are not objects of knowledge, they function as necessary limiting concepts and as the metaphysical ground of appearances. Consequently, Kant’s Copernican Revolution should be understood as a rearticulation rather than a replacement of metaphysics.
Scholarship on Kant’s religious writings commonly diverges on two related issues: the theological weight and meaning of his endorsement of religious faith, and the apparent inconsistency between his earlier and later, seemingly less secular, treatments of the subject. The questions raised by these disputes are not only theoretical; for at stake is whether in Kant’s considered view a just political community is ultimately sustainable without affirmative theological commitments of some kind.Kant’s brief essay “On the Failure of All Philosophic Efforts at Theodicy” opens a promising window on such questions. It is thematically continuous with the Critique of Judgment, published one year earlier, that itself ends with an implicit proof of the impossibility of theodicy understood as a theoretical justification of God’s moral wisdom based on what experience of the world teaches. [8:255] At the same time, Kant’s essay also differs from the Critique of Judgment in in a number of crucial ways that partly reflect Kant’s darkening assessment of his political circumstances as ones requiring new means of public enlightenment on the crucial question of the true basis of religious faith, as reflected in subsequent religious writings beginning with Religion within the Boundaries of Bare Reason. One striking feature of that change is the replacement of sincerity, or honesty before the bar of conscience, with conscientiousness, or striving to be honest, as the highest goal of moral aspiration, and of indulgence of the inclinations through self-deception as the ultimate source of human evil. Another is conceptual room for something like grace in the religious sense.
El principio trascendental de la razón y la necesidad de la naturaleza en el Apéndice de la Dialéctica trascendental
este trabajo presenta una propuesta original de lo que, en la literatura secundaria, se ha denominado la ‘teoría de la necesitación’. Esta teoría, por un lado, defiende la necesidad de las leyes particulares de la naturaleza a partir de una consideración metafísica que sostiene que las leyes se derivan de las naturalezas de las cosas; por otro lado, sostiene que la necesidad de las leyes particulares no es cognoscible para los seres humanos. En el artículo, argumento que esto último es insatisfactorio y propongo enmendar la tesis epistémica, señalando que por medio del principio trascendental de la razón comprendemos los fundamentos metafísicos de la naturaleza y propongo una solución a un cuestionamiento escéptico que no ha sido atendido por sus defensores sobre la unidad sistemática y las clasificaciones de la naturaleza.
On Artistic and Moral Wisdom in the Theodicy
This essay looks at a section of Kant’s ‘On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’, 8: 263-65, in which he makes two distinctions: first, that between artistic and moral wisdom, and second, that between doctrinal and authentic theodicy. The essay defends Kant’s vindication of Providence from a practical point of view. Kant argues that all the philosophical attempts at theodicy fail, but we can continue to hold onto the faith that the world is wisely governed if we restrict ourselves to moral, as opposed to artistic, wisdom and to authentic, as opposed to doctrinal, theodicy. Kant’s key move is negative, that the workings of the highest wisdom are beyond our experience and so beyond our insight; but where there is no theoretical veto, the practical interest prevails. The essay considers what this priority of the practical amounts to. Kant uses the geographical metaphor of ‘domains’ and argues that Reason, which has both theoretical and practical employments, has an interest in extending its territory, which requires theoretical reason to accept existence claims needed by practical reason even though these claims cannot be legitimated by theoretical reason from its own insight. The ‘authentic’ theodicy is God’s declaration within the practical employment of reason that there is a wisdom behind the creation and maintenance of the universe even though it is inscrutable to us and hidden.
This study examines Immanuel Kant’s 1791 essay on theodicy as a legal proceeding before the “court of reason,” where divine justice is assessed through rational inquiry rather than doctrinal authority. It explores the political context of the essay, Kant’s interpretation of nature, and the role of the Book of Job as a model of sincere religious faith. The study also considers the duties of theologians and clergy and reflects on the essay’s continuing relevance for issues related to religion, morality, and the problem of evil.
Kant's Alleged Ambiguity Toward Leibniz: Revisiting the Critique of Dogmatism
This paper discusses Kant’s critique of Leibniz, especially in the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection in the Critique of Pure Reason. Although Kant’s early criticism suggests an identification of Leibniz with Wolffian dogmatism, later texts reveal a more nuanced attitude, distinguishing between Leibniz’s own metaphysics and its early reception. Examining the four central pairs of concepts of reflection–identity/diversity, agreement/opposition, inner/outer, and matter/form, this article shows that what Kant primarily criticizes is a form of Leibnizianism popularized through Wolff, rather than Leibniz himself. Drawing on Leibniz’s writings, it is shown that the alleged ambiguity in Kant’s position toward Leibniz reflects a certain development in his thought: namely, a movement from critique toward partial retrieval. This study is relevant not only to the question of Leibniz’s reception in the eighteenth century, but also to understanding Kant’s relationship to the rationalist tradition, which he sought both to overcome and to preserve.
Schematic Mediation in the Critique of Pure Reason: Synthesis of Imagination and Schematism
My aim in this article is to propose an interpretation of the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, in order to elucidate the relation between schematism and the a priori synthesis of imagination. The guiding questions may be formulated as follows: What exactly does Kant mean when he claims that the “schema is a product of the imagination”? What is the relation between this statement and the one in §10, according to which synthesis is an effect of imagination, or the one in the B Deduction, according to which imagination performs a transcendental synthesis? I defend the thesis that, insofar as imagination determines time a priori according to the unity of the categories, it translates each of them into a temporal language (or a language of transcendental imagination), that is, it gives sense to the category in the determination of the object when it is thought according to temporal patterns.
«Una fortaleza imbatida a espaldas del nuevo frente» Una nota sobre la doctrina de las facultades cognoscitivas, la crítica de Salomon Maimon y la réplica de Kant
El presente escrito aborda la doctrina kantiana de la heterogeneidad de las facultades cognoscitivas y de los tipos específicos de representación a partir de la crítica a la misma por parte de Salomon Maimon en su Ensayo sobre la filosofía transcendental. Dicha crítica se presenta como rehabilitación de la teoría racionalista prekantiana de la Metafísica escolar alemana, a la vez que como anticipación de la tendencia especulativa característica del incipiente pensamiento postkantiano. Se destaca la vindicación por parte del filósofo de Königsberg de una dualidad de los elementos implicados en el conocimiento humano y en la constitución a priori de la experiencia atendiendo a su defensa de dicha doctrina frente a los ataques de Maimon, lo que asimismo sirve como una suerte de auto-demarcación histórico-filosófica por parte de Kant, tanto frente a la tradición racionalista contra la que se vuelve críticamente su pensamiento, como frente a aquellos ensayos de reformulación y superación de su doctrina que confluyeron en la irrupción del Idealismo alemán. Como motivo fundamental de la oposición de Kant a una y otra propuestas filosóficas se quiere apuntar su compromiso con el pensamiento de la finitud del conocimiento humano que es, a su vez, la del propio sujeto cognoscente
This paper rests on my claim elsewhere (see Huxford, 2020) that Kant was concerned with the fundamentals of theodicy throughout his career and not just in the short 1791 essay devoted to the subject. It sets out Kant’s positions, developed in the period before the publication of his first Critique, regarding these fundamentals, namely God’s existence, the nature of evil and the reality of free will. Some of these positions were maintained through Kant’s career, others were either present only in embryonic form or abandoned altogether. Three issues dominate. First, Kant downgraded physical evil to natural harm. Second, evil was ontologically real being a negative value on the scale of goodness. Third, Kant continued to advance theoretical theodicies after the publication of his first Critique thus leaving a serious disconnect when his work is viewed in toto. I regard Kant’s thought on these fundamentals to be exploratory. So this paper does not attempt to pull his thoughts together into pre-Critical theodical “system”, although elements of such can be discerned.
The Power of Illusion. Disgust and Representability in Moses Mendelssohn’s Aesthetics
In the context of the emergence of aesthetics as an autonomous discipline in mid-eighteenth-century Germany, Moses Mendelssohn was one of the leading voices in the development of a new theory of sentiments and representation. In this context, Mendelssohn understood the need to delineate the limits of aesthetic representation and addressed the issue through an in-depth study of sentiments. In this article, I propose a study of the category of disgust in Mendelssohn's aesthetics, starting from his theory of aesthetic illusion. Disgust is, in fact, a feeling that cannot be reduced to the illusion created by the work of art but always refers to reality. To this end, I will refer mainly to the 82nd Literaturbrief, in which Mendelssohn expounds his study of disgust, and secondly to the Rhapsody as a text that reveals the need to deepen the theory of aesthetic illusion in light of the limits indicated through disgust. Finally, an aesthetic paradigm will emerge, which is also relevant to the contemporary debate on the possibilities of aesthetic representation
Derechos de autor 2025 Con-Textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy
Este artículo tiene como objetivo reconstruir la Refutación del Idealismo de Kant como un argumento trascendental exitoso dirigido al mundo contra el “idealismo problemático” de Mendelssohn. El idealismo problemático de Mendelssohn surge tanto de una doctrina metafísica como epistemológica que tiene una raíz cartesiana innegable. Metafísicamente, él asume lo que podemos llamar una visión “realista de sentido común”: que las apariencias fuera de nuestra mente en el espacio son, en sí mismas, materiales por naturaleza, al igual que las apariencias dentro de nuestra mente son, en sí mismas, mentales por naturaleza (una posición que él llama “dualismo”). Epistemológicamente, Mendelssohn sostiene que hay una brecha fundamental entre los mundos material y mental, ya que la inferencia de nuestras representaciones internas a las supuestas cosas materiales externas que supuestamente copian es, en el mejor de los casos, problemática—esto es lo que llamamos “realismo indirecto”. La Refutación de Kant desafía ambos aspectos de esta visión. En el nivel epistemológico, Kant argumenta que tenemos conciencia directa de la existencia de cosas materiales externas en el espacio. En el nivel metafísico, él afirma que la naturaleza última de las cosas externas no es ni material ni mental, sino que consiste en cosas en sí mismas independientes de la mente—noumena en el sentido negativo. Sin embargo, el argumento de Kant solo puede tener éxito como un argumento trascendental dirigido al mundo si es capaz de establecer la verdad de que una cosa persistente independiente de la mente en sí misma es una condición necesaria para la conciencia de nuestra existencia determinada en el tiempo.
El sesgo hacia la dependencia: mujeres y ciudadanía pasiva en la Doctrina del Derecho.
Kant distingue entre ciudadanos pasivos y activos, solo los primeros tienen derecho a votar. El problema es que Kant nunca justificó esta restricción, por lo que se han propuesto dos principales tesis para explicarla: la tesis de la corrupción, que considera que los ciudadanos pasivos carecen de juicio autónomo por lo que no pueden votar, y la tesis de la independencia interdependiente, que defiende que no es un problema de juicio, sino de su posición social: al depender de otros, no pueden ser co-legisladores. Este artículo sugiere una posición intermedia: la ciudadanía pasiva es una situación social de dependencia, pero también hay de que Kant desconfiaba de las capacidades de juicio de ciertos grupos que consideraba pasivos, como las mujeres. Defenderé que Kant analiza que la dependencia bajo el sesgo que los dependientes no pueden juzgar igual que los ciudadanos activos.
Kant on Individual Noumena and the Limits of Discursive Understanding
It is relatively uncontroversial among scholars that, according to Kant, we cannot have determinate theoretical cognition of noumena. In this paper I shall argue that Kant’s account of the limits of human understanding allows us to draw a more radical conclusion: the very notion of an individual ‘intelligible being’ lies beyond human comprehension. I further suggest that this claim best conveys Kant’s ban of a positive use of the notion of noumenon. My investigation is guided by a question: Is it possible for concepts to successfully refer to an individual object in absence of sensible intuition? Or, to put it differently, is it possible to single out one or multiple individual noumena (and not mere concepts thereof) falling under a certain concept? I shall argue that, while we cannot exclude this possibility, we cannot comprehend (and thus admit) it either. My hope in this paper is thus to shed further light on Kant’s stance towards noumena.
Kant on Freedom of the Will and the Development of Classical German Philosophy. Review of: Jörg Noller and John Walsh (translators and editors), Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, XLVII + 315 pp., ISBN: 978-1-108-72967-3
El interés cosmopolita del conocimiento en Kant
Este artículo llama la atención sobre el problema del sentido del conocimiento en Kant y la necesidad de una orientación del mismo. En esta perspectiva, toma en consideración la distinción kantiana entre el concepto escolar de la filosofía y el concepto cósmico de la misma. En la medida en que este concepto de filosofía defiende la orientación de los saberes hacia los fines morales o destino moral de la humanidad, se hace posible hablar de interés cosmopolita del conocimiento. La tesis del artículo es que dicho concepto de filosofía enlaza con la presencia de la noción de interés de la razón en Kant, siendo, además, consistente con la valoración, por Habermas, del interés puro práctico como un interés rector del conocimiento. Se estructura en dos puntos: 1. El interés de la razón práctica como interés movilizador e interés rector del conocimiento. 2. El concepto cósmico de la filosofía como expresión del interés cosmopolita del conocimiento y sentido de este.
Situated universals (visions from the Third World)
Esta nota es una versio´n de una charla online que di en el Workshop “Kant and Universalism from a Global Perspective”, el día 25 de octubre de 2024, en la Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. El evento fue organizado por Marcus WIllaschek y Simon Rebohm. Aproveché la oportunidad para hablar del sentido de leer a Kant en el Tercer Mundo y sobre mi experiencia con la geopolítica del conocimiento.
Kant, la Comisión europea y la Unidad de la razón
El texto examina la decisión del Tratado de Roma (1957) de designar “Comisión” al órgano ejecutivo europeo, en sustitución de la “Alta Autoridad” de la CECA. Sostiene que esa elección nominal, aparentemente anodina y técnica, buscó evitar la apariencia de soberanía supranacional y, al mismo tiempo, instaló una gramática tecnocrática que despolitiza el poder. A la luz de Schmitt y Heidegger, se cuestiona la presunta neutralidad de la técnica y su capacidad para ocultar decisiones políticas bajo el velo de lo “técnico”. El hilo conductor es Kant: la distinción entre lo técnico-práctico y lo moral-práctico, y entre el “político moral” y el “moralista político”. Solo el primado de lo moral-práctico —de las leyes fundadas en la libertad y habiendo puesto entre paréntesis toda decisión con origen en las determinaciones naturales— puede limitar la política y orientar el Estado hacia la paz perpetua; la prudencia técnica produce gestión, astucia y simulación. Aplicado a Europa, llamar “Comisión” al ejecutivo habría sido una argucia que predispone a la Unión a la hegemonía de la técnica, debilitando la transparencia y la posibilidad de si quiera comprender el derecho cosmopolita como mandato. El ensayo concluye que esta deriva favorece el nihilismo y la desafección ciudadana: sin una rearticulación de la unidad de la razón y del lugar de la persona, la maquinaria institucional deviene engranaje sin horizonte.
The Role and Scope of Intuition (Anschauung) in Kant Transcendental Philosophy
Kant's notion of intuition is usually associated with the a priori forms of space and time. In my paper, firstly, I want to demonstrate that intuition is very complex and has different functions for transcendental consciousness and plays an important role in each function, secondly, to substantiate the thesis that this concept is key to understanding the principle of Kant's transcendental philosophy, and thirdly, to point out some aporias or problems associated with this concept. Here are some difficulties: the relationship between pure intuition and empirical intuition is problematic, and the function of intuition and representation is difficult to distinguish unambiguously. In my article, I will consider several key points in Kant's philosophy for which the concept of intuition plays its own special function.
Una defensa de Marcos Thisted sobre la unidad temática y la coherencia doctrinal de los Fortschritte der Metaphysik. Reseña de: Thisted, Marcos A. Kant y la metafísica crítica circa 1792-1795. Análisis e interpretación de los Fortschritte der Metaphysik. Cuadernos Kantianos, Revista de Estudios Kantianos, 2024, 200 páginas.
"O homem é a única criatura que tem de ser educada". Sobre a relação entre a educação e a filosofia da História kantianas
O presente ensaio visa mostrar o diálogo que as sugestões de Kant para a educação estabelecem com a sua filosofia da História. Tendo como ponto de partida a tese, presente nas Lições sobre pedagogia, segundo a qual «O homem é a única criatura que tem de ser educada», discute-se a sua justificação a partir do conceito kantiano de Bestimmung, de acordo com o qual a concretização da vocação do homem depende de um esforço permanente e de natureza intergeracional. Neste quadro de ideias, a questão da educação revela a sua importância em dois sentidos: tanto a educação que está intrinsecamente pressuposta no processo de desenvolvimento integral da razão e no progresso cultural e civilizacional, como a educação em sentido estrito, considerada enquanto mecanismo institucionalizado. Neste plano, vemos Kant reforçar a urgência de pensar um sistema educativo conforme aos propósitos do género humano e a refletir nas suas sugestões para a educação – e nas suas quatro tarefas: disciplinar, cultivar, civilizar e moralizar – o trajeto de maturação da razão nas suas várias fases.