Kant’s Geographies

Advisory Editors: Antonio Branca (ant.branca.ab@gmail.com) e Francesco Valagussa (valagussa.francesco@unisr.it)

DEADLINE: 15 Sept 2024

 

Celebrating the 300th anniversary of Kant's birth, the focus of this issue of "Aisthesis", Kant's Geographies, aims at using the "geographies" and topological themes of Kant's thought as a magnifier to question it as a whole. Better said: in its more concrete aspects. Alongside Kant as a "cartographer of reason", the issue intends to discuss Kant as an explorer of what he called Erfahrenheit: of the experiencing in the full range of its complexities and facets.

From Kaulbach and Düsing to the most recent literature, the Kantian studies not only proved that the three Critiques presuppose a cosmic idea of philosophy, out of which the project of reason unfolds. They proved, moreover, that such project implies a peculiar form of empirical knowledge of the world, an empirical Welterkenntnis, through which the historical, pragmatical and effective reality unfolds before mankind. By describing "the place of mankind within the world", the Physical Geography represents an essential moment of Kantian effort to answer to the question: "what is man?". An effort intertwined with all the major issues of Kant's thought: with the anthropological and cosmopolitical problems – as well as with the very critical and transcendental instance, which casts projection of ideas and vanishing points, progresses by tables, sets boundaries, indicates borders, circumscribes territories and domains.

In this direction, what needs to be questioned is first of all the very distinction between a posteriori and a priori, between historical and rational, empirical and transcendental – a distinction that must be questioned to verify whether all these terms, in Kant, remain juxtaposed (when not radically opposed), or whether the Critiques rather stand as an effort to elaborate a model of reason which, preserving all these distinctions (but if so, how?), understands them from the beginning in a dynamical way. What does it mean, in fact, that the a priori is the condition of the a posteriori? In what sense, in the terms of the Opus postumum, is the empirical the position of the transcendental? Starting from these questions, countless places and "geographies" reopen in Kant. From that of the limit and the end, to that of the principle of Judgment, of the aesthetic dimension, of the self and of the “sense of community”, up to the space of orientation, of the political praxis, of history and its narrative.

Contributions to this Focus are welcome concerning the following and related topics:

• Kant’s Physical Geography, per se and in relation to the other empirical forms of knowledges (Anthropology, but not only) and Transcendental Philosophy;
• The general problem of the empirical in Kant’s philosophy, of its knowledge, principle and relationship with the transcendental plane;
• The problem of orientation (in space, as well as reason) and the role of reflection;
• The teleological dimension in Kantian philosophy and the concepts of Grenze and Schranke;
• Kant’s concept of history and of historical knowledge;
• The relationship between physical geography and cosmopolitical perspective – especially in dialogue with contemporary geopolitics;
• Kant’s conception of empirical subject and the I-situation within the world.

  Contributions must be submitted in English or French and must strictly adhere to the Aisthesis Guidelines.

  Only contributions compliant with Author Guidelines will be admitted to peer review.

 

SUBMISSIONS MUST CONFORM TO THE INSTRUCTIONS SET OUT BELOW. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.

All editorial inquiries should be addressed to:

Fabrizio Desideri (Editor): fabrizio.desideri@unifi.it

Marina Montanelli (Editorial Secretariat): marina.montanelli@unifi.it

Aisthesis publishes academic articles in Italian, English and French, current research articles, symposia, special issues, and timely book reviews. It publishes two issues per year and contains a thematic section, a miscellany, notices and reviews. Each issue contains invited papers and contributed papers.

Articles should be submitted using the online submission system. They should be in .doc or .docx format, A4, paginated, double spaced throughout (i.e. including references and quotations), with ample margins. They should be formatted for blind review, not normally exceed 7,500 words and should include an abstract of no more than 150 words and five keywords (in English).

Tables and illustrations should be submitted to the online submission system in separate files to the main manuscript. Please be aware that you may have to secure figure permissions upon acceptance.