Research: Kant and the Moral Question of the World. The Human Being as a Being in the World
This research focuses on the moral question of the world in Kant’s late thought, in relation to the cosmic concept (Weltbegriff) of philosophy and to the radicalization of the practical primacy of transcendental philosophy in the Opus postumum. The idea underlying the project arises from an interest in the various names Kant uses to designate the human being, all of which are consistently connected to the theme of the world: from the more general Weltwesen (being in the wolrd), which appears in texts engaging with the theme of the highest good and with almost obsessive insistence in the first fascicle of the Opus postumum, to the Weltbürger of the Anthropology. Between these two, a series of less frequently used terms can also be identified, such as Weltbewohner, Weltbeschauer, Weltbeobachter, Cosmotheoròs, Weltmann, Erdensohn, and Mensch der Natur. These terms display, from case to case, distinct semantic nuances—more or less clearly articulated—and are at times correlated with one another or set in opposition. An investigation of their meanings and contexts is therefore expected to provide a privileged access to the understanding of the ultimate sense of transcendental philosophy, in which reason’s tension toward the ideal is constantly and structurally limited by the finitude of the human being.
To this end, the study will proceed by distinguishing and relating to one another the cosmic concept of philosophy as a purposive unity on the transcendental level, and the cosmopolitical (weltbürgerlich) end of the practical and pragmatic domain. The distinction between the cosmopolitical plane and the Weltbegriff is intended to bring to light two different senses of the moral end in Kant: the former is tied to the practical sphere and finds its fulfillment in the Metaphysics of Morals, while the latter concerns the very meaning of transcendental philosophy as a purposive unity of the theoretical and the practical in accordance with the vocation of the human being. This second level, which already emerges in the Transcendental Doctrine of Method but is not yet clearly distinguished from the first, receives a later, though unfortunately incomplete, elaboration in fragmentary and posthumously published texts such as the Progress of Metaphysics and the moral fascicles of the Opus postumum. This distinction does not, however, imply an independence between the two planes, which instead prove to be closely interconnected: the realization of reason in the world must be guided by the idea of purposive unity, yet the germ at the origin of that idea seems unable to develop where morality is profoundly hindered by history. The image of the transcendental philosopher who gazes upon the ruins of past metaphysics thus does not address only the teleological structure of reason, but also determines, on the metaphysical level, the course of that negative philosophy of history which Kant outlines in his practical writings.