Is Metaphysics the only Discipline that Can Be Complete?  The Completeness of Metaphysics in Kant and Wolff

Bruna Picas Prats; Dino  Jakušić

doi:10.5209/kant.104345

Bruna Picas Prats University of Barcelona/ University of Warwick https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6388-6193
Dino Jakušić University of Warwick https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6688-0763

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/kant.104345

Resumo

The aim of this article is twofold. First, against Marcus Willaschek’s statement that Kant’s systematicity of metaphysics is shared with the other sciences, it examines Kant’s assertion that metaphysics is the only discipline capable of achieving completeness. Second, this article explores the continuity between Kant and Wolff regarding the inquiry about what criterion of completeness is suitable for metaphysics as a system. To this end, we address two central questions: what does it mean for metaphysics to be ‘complete’? Is there something special about the completeness of metaphysics that is not shared by other sciences? We will identify two kinds of completeness, which we refer to as ‘unconditioned completeness’ and ‘comprehensiveness’ and demonstrate the continuity in how Kant and Wolff understand these terms. Furthermore, we will demonstrate that both Kant and Wolff argue that unconditioned completeness is unique to metaphysics. Finally, we will discuss why, despite these similarities, Kant would still be dissatisfied with Wolff’s conception of metaphysical completeness.

Biografia do Autor

Bruna Picas Prats, University of Barcelona/ University of Warwick

Bruna Picas Prats studied in Barcelona, Leipzig and Warwick. Her main area of research is German Idealism, with a particular focus on the theoretical philosophy of Hegel and Kant. She has also worked on the intersections between Wittgenstein, classical German philosophy and pragmatism, and feminism. She is currently in the final months of her PhD, writing a dissertation on systematic completeness in Hegel’s Science of Logic under the supervision of Edgar Maraguat at the University of Valencia and Salvi Turró at the University of Barcelona. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Hegel en Perspectiva research group at the University of Valencia. During the 2021–22 academic year, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Leipzig's FAGI (Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism), and in 2022 she conducted research at the University of Warwick's Department of Philosophy. She has worked as a graduate teaching assistant there since then. Her main publications include an article entitled 'Hegel’s Organic Systematicity: Kant, Reinhold, and Hegel on the Debate on Philosophy as a Systematic Science' in the special issue System and Complexity in Classical German Philosophy, Vol. 1 (2024), and 'Cogency: Journal of Reasoning and Argumentation. She also published an article entitled 'Readings of Sexual Difference in Hegel and Collin: Definition, Division, and Praxis' in the edited volume Hegel and Feminism, published by Bloomsbury Academic (upcoming). She is currently editing a volume entitled New Readings of Hegel's Dialectic, for which she has a potential contract with Bloomsbury Academic and the collaboration of outstanding scholars such as Angelica Nuzzo, Stefan Bird-Pollan, and Joseph Carew.

Dino Jakušić, University of Warwick

Dino Jakušić is an Assistant Professor (Research focused) and a Pathways to Knowledge Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick. As part of his fellowship, he is leading an interdisciplinary research project investigating how important history of philosophy is perceived to be in the standard UK undergraduate philosophy curriculum. Prior to his position at the IAS, he held several teaching positions at the Warwick Department of Philosophy. He specialises in the history of metaphysics, especially ontology in Classical German Philosophy. His most relevant publication is "Wolff on Ontology as Primary Philosophy" in Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy, edited by Robert Dunphy & Toby Lovat.

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