We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 12th,  Moreno Rocchi (La Sapienza, Università di Roma) will present a paper on Kant at the German Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago. The title of the paper is “Formal Intuition and Transcendental Method in Kant”.  

Below is the abstract of the paper

In a footnote of the first Critique Kant introduces the distinction between “form of intuition” and “formal intuition” of space, which has given rise to endless commentary. In this paper, I argue that this distinction represents only a momentary stage of the Kantian process of philosophical reflection. I further argue that the representation of space, considered per se, turns out to be nothing but a form of modal consciousness. Before giving some reasons to accept this ‘deflationary’ reading, I first criticize Longuenesse’s interpretation, arguing that she falls prey to a fatal ambiguity between ‘psychologism’ and ‘Neo-Kantianism’. Second, I show how a proper attention to the early reception of the first Critique can be of help in understanding what is at stake in this difficult footnote. In this context, I stress the systematic importance of the now almost forgotten criticism that Jakob Sigismund Beck raised against Reinhold’s approach to the Critique. Drawing inspiration from Beck, subsequently I point out a gap between the superficial order of exposition and the results of Kant’s Critique, for I consider the acknowledgment of such a gap as the precondition for regarding the notion of mere “formal intuition” as nothing but the complementary pendant of the second edition Transcendental Deduction’s analysis of “the category” in general.

The workshop will meet on Friday, from 1:30pm to 4:20pm at the University of Chicago, Wieboldt 408.