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eljko Loparic is professor of philosophy at the State University of Campinas (Brazil). He is specialized in both Kantian and Heideggerian thought, as well as in the Epistemology of Psychoanalysis. In the kantian area his most important contributions, to mention just few works, are his Phd thesis on Kant, entitled "Scientific Problem-Solving in Kant and Mach", an article published in Kant-Studien (3, 1990):"The Logical Structure of the First Antinomy", and finally two articles on the topic of "Transcendental Semantics": "Kant's Philosophical Method (I)" (Synthesis Philosophica: 2, 1991), and "Kant's Philosophical Method(II)" (Synthesis Philosophica: 1, 1992). These are all valuable studies which reinterpret the Transcendental Idealism in a semantical view, always in critical dialog with contemporary thinkers, proposing original interpretations and creative solutions to some fundamental questions of philosophy. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize here just one of his articles (unfortunately only in Portuguese) appeared in Manuscrito(1988:2): "Kant e o Ceticismo" (Kant and the Skepticism). This article arises the thesis that the Transcendental Idealism was not conceived by Kant in opposition to skepticism, that Kant in fact was not trying to rule out Humean and Cartesian skepticisms through the establishment of new grounds to the metaphysics presented in the Critique of Pure Reason. In Loparic's view, Kant did not eradicate skepticism but he tried to radicalize it at the absolute maximum. The so propagated idea that Kant overcame skepticism become here the thesis that Kant definitely domesticated Humean skepticism and Cartesian doubt precisely through their radicalization. This way Loparic intends to show us that Kant did not bring about a new fundamentalism but instead of this demonstrated the total impossibility of all philosophical fundamentalism in the human knowledge domain. How is it supposed to be? Loparic explains that Kant's skepticism prompts the "prudence of reason", and is also useful to become the reasoning disciplined. We all learn through skepticism that all knowledge grounds are irreparably undermined and that there is in no place whatever any certainty or confidence. In spite of this, such evidence is in any way no final conclusion but a starting point to something beyond that. Beginning from this skeptic panorama, Kant could establish a general science about the utmost attainment of our cognitive power or the external limits of our reason. This science should be founded on firm precepts of verified universality. In this sense we should pass from the censure of reason to its criticism: a way of determining what kind of necessary questions of pure reason admit solutions and what kind do not admit them. The central problem of the Critique would be, according to this view, the problem of decidability. The solution found in the Critique is, of course, that the only problems objectively valid are those about which we can obtain a certain decision either on its truth or falsity. The Reason, therefore, is no more restricted to the evidence of its ignorance but it goes beyond, constructing its selfknowledge. These are precisely the unsurmountable limits inside of which it is possible to obtain some knowledge, i. e., the knowledge of the philosophical principles a priori whose attainment is the experience or the sphere of both empiric and pure intuitions. This is why only questions which utilize intuitively significative concepts can be answered by the Reason. So, Transcendental Idealism would have nothing incompatible with skepticism in general. Nonetheless, it goes beyond skepticism by transforming the certainty of our ignorance into the selfknowledge of an autonomous legislation domain inside of which we can obtain decidable knowledge. To go next, click on the button "conclusion" above. |
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