The Metaphysics of Morals

The aim of this project is to develop a critical research of the Metaphysik der Sitten (1797-8), where the Kantian practical philosophy reaches, in the words of A. Wood, its “final form”. The main object that guides this project consists in specifying the features of the new architectonic form of Kant’s practical philosophy, as well as the proper features of the two Doctrines in which it is divided (v. gr., Rechtslehre – political and juridical philosophy - and Tugendlehre- ethics).

Members: Dra. Macarena Marey (Director), Lic. Marcos Thisted, Dr. Hernán Pringe, Fiorella Tomassini, Hugo Figueredo Núñez, Pablo Moscón, Federico Curutchet, Ana Inés Dutari, Nicolás Vila.

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With this goal as guidance to the study of the MS, our group will develop different lines of work in order to support a series of hypothesis concerning its main topics, namely: a) The independence of Kant’s practical-juridical philosophy with regard to his Ethics, b) the understanding of the Kantian political proposal as one which both continues and goes beyond some of the central tenets advanced by Modern natural law theories as well as by Rousseau’s political thought, c) the understanding of Kantian Ethics as based upon a supreme “material” principle (“humanity as an end in itself”), in contradistinction to its formalistic-procedural interpretation, and, lastly, d) the need to understand Kant’s practical philosophy in its systematicity.

Kant and the critic to the metaphysica specialis: The Transcendental Dialectic in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

The Project has as background the study already made by the same team on the concept of time in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason. In this second phase we aim to study the critic made to the metaphysica specialis by the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition which takes place in the Transcendental Dialectic, second section of the Transcendental Logic of the Critique of Pure Reason.

The philosophy scholars of the eighteenth-century have already pointed that the starting point of Kant in metaphysics is the concept of this discipline which offers him the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition. Recovering a former classification, the main agents of this tradition (Ch. Wolff, A. G. Baumgarten) divide the metaphysics into metaphysica general or ontology and a metaphysica specialis. This last one, the metaphysica specialis, is divided again into three specific disciplines: psychology, cosmology and rational theology (Cf. A.G. Baumgarten, Metaphysica).

This division of metaphysics has repercussions in the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. In fact, as it is well known, one of it’s main chapters, the Transcendental Logic, is dividen into an Analytic and a Transcendental Dialectic. While in the first of this sections it is developed a radical critic to the metaphysica generalis or ontology; in the second one -the Transcendental Dialectic- it is verified an exhaustive critic to the transcendental illusion hidden in each of the disciplines of the traditional metaphysica specialis.

The task of the research that we have proposed ourselves consists in the identification of the function, the meaning and the projection in the history of philosophy of this detailed and exhaustive critic to the dogmatical metaphysica specialis that is found in the Transcendental Dialectic, those “critic to the dialectic appearance”. [KrV, A 62 - B 86].

Members: Lic. Marcos Thisted (Director), Dr. Fernando Moledo (Codirector), Dr. Ricardo Cattaneo, Dr. Macarena Marey, Dr. Hernán Pringe, Ana Inés Dutari, Hugo Figueredo, Miguel Herzenbaun, Melina Krimker, Luciana Martínez, Lucila Moreno, Jacinto Páez, Laura Pelegrín, Lucila Ojea, Martín Oliveira, Fiorella Tomassini, Alejandro I. Virué.

Logic, method and subjectivity in the controversy between Heidegger and Neokantism

The main purpose of the investigation is to analyze the controversy between Heidegger and Neokantism around three key points. The first of them is the problem of “pure logic” and, more precisely, the debate about Psychologism. Without neglecting the unavoidable reference to Husserl, we are going to attain in particular to the relations of Heidegger with the Neokantian tradition of Baden school in respect to the problems of judgment and the theory of value. Lotze, Rickert and Lask are the philosophers to be considered. The second point is the one of philosophical method and, more specifically, the opposition between transcendental method and the existencial-phenomenological one as a way of answering to the problems opened by the Kantian Legacy. In this case, we will be dealing with the ideas of Cohen, Natorp and Windelband, as well as the Cassirer-Heidegger disputation in Davos. This controversy will also be considered under the third point of the project: The problem of the subject. Here we are going to study the strain between the Heidegger’s conception of Dasein and a logical-transcendental interpretation of subjectivity.

Members: Dr. Hernán Pringe (Director) Dr. Bernardo Ainbinder (Codirector) Lic. Marcos Thisted Dra.Macarena Marey  Prof. Miguel Herzenbaun   Luciana Martínez Jacinto Páez Laura Pelegrín Javier San Sebastián Juan Manuel Vila Pérez

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