In this paper, I aim to reflect on the distinction between illusion and decep-tion regarding knowledge, using the analogy between the illusion of the senses and the tran-scendental illusion at the beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason as a guiding thread. After noting an affinity between the metaphor that opens the section & laquo;Phae-nomena and Noumena & raquo; of the Transcendental Analytic and the incipit of the Transcendental Dialectic, in the first section I discuss the gap between T & auml;uschung (illusion)and Betrug (deception) in the context of Anthropology, Lectures on Metaphysics and the Critique of Judgment. In the second part of this paper, I examine judgment as the key site where the shift from illusion to deception can occur; here my intention is to analyze the function of provisional judgments in empirical knowledge. The third and final section is devoted to transcendental illusion and responds to a twofold task: (I) to identify in regulative use of ideas the transcendental analogon of provisional judgments, and (II) to explore its positive implications for knowledge.
& centerdot; In this article I analyse how Kant conceives the problem of comparison in his pub-lished works (particularly the Anthropology, the first Critique, the third Critique) as well as in his Lectures on Anthropology and in his Lectures on Metaphysics. The aim of the article is to show that Kant changes his mind many times, attributing the capacity to compare sometimes to im-agination, sometimes to wit and sometimes to judgment. I will attempt to show that this in-decision is linked to an unclear distinction between intuitive comparison (which perceives a similarity) and logical comparison (which grasps an affinity). These two forms of comparison tend to overlap, creating conceptual confusion, because in most cases similarity and affinity occur together and similarity is the visible sign of affinity. However, it seems plausible to think that two things are similar when they have common sensible properties (for example, shape or colour), and two things are related or akin when they have a common origin or cause. In various text Kant seems on the verge of formulating this distinction, which, however, is never fully explicitly defined. This uncertainty is reflected in the indecision whereby comparison is sometimes attributed to imagination, sometimes to wit, and sometimes to judgment. Indeed, while the relation of similarity can only be grasped in a sensible comparison, for which im-agination seems necessary, the ascertainment of a relation of affinity is intellectual in nature and seems to require judgment.
This paper focuses on the current debate among Anglophone scholars about Kant's classification of human varieties and its impact on the development of his critical phi-losophy. In the last three years, literature on this controversial issue has grown significantly in quantity and nuance, amidst increasing attention to Kant's attitude towards human gender and race. In Part I we focus on the most recent work of Huaping Lu-Adler (2023), examining her perspective within the context of other dominant and dissonant views. In Part II we criti-cally assess the key notions and methods represented by her kind of analysis (& sect;& sect; 1-2), highlight-ing key aspects of Lu-Adler's conception of racism and reflecting on the anti-universalist pol-emic that seems to underlie her approach (& sect; 3).
K.L. Reinhold is generally taken to assert immediate knowledge of free will. I argue for a novel reading of Reinhold's epistemology of freedom, based on the methodological distinction between common human understanding and philosophizing reason. For Reinhold, the philosophical justification of the proposition that we possess free will is based on consciousness of the moral law, and therefore is not a baldly asserted fact. This philosophical justification involves tracing the & laquo;facts> of moral self-consciousness to their transcendental grounds. I conclude by showing that Reinhold's position is characteristic of the critical philosophy.
& centerdot; Hans Vaihinger interprets scientific fictions as useful misrepresentations of reality, enabling scientific inquiry. His fictionalism has been mainly associated with pragmatism, but some of its crucial aspects exhibit a Kantian lineage often overlooked. The paper argues that Vaihinger's fictionalism reconciles pragmatism and transcendental philosophy by focusing on the ethical motivations behind Kant's transcendentalphilosophy. It thus belongs broadly within the tradition of Baden Neo-Kantianism. I start by situating Vaihinger's epistemological project among 19th-century German 'pragmatist' and 'naturalized' readings of Kant. I then show that a coherent, albeit unconventional, transcendental perspective is at play in Vaihinger's fictional-ism. Two primary features of this perspective are highlighted: a psychologistic reading of productive imagination and an emphasis on the ethical motivations of transcendental critique. Fictions emerge as peculiar entia rationis with a regulative function toward empirical intuitions and a constitutive function toward scientific theories. The reconsideration of Vaihinger's fictionalism as a Neo-Kantian junction between pragmatism and transcendental philosophy offers relevant insight not only into the historical roots of contemporary fictionalism but also into some often-neglected conceptual intersections in early 20th-century epistemology.
