Aisthesis

Foreword

Antonio Branca — 2025-02-25

Geografia fisica. Introduzione e Concetti matematici preliminari (AA IX, 156-183)

Immanuel Kant — 2025-02-25

«…noch bevor wir sie selbst erlangen». Remarks on Kant’s Geographies of the Empirical

Antonio Branca — 2025-02-25

The objective of this article is to provide some insights into Kant’s conception of the empirical with a view to a better understanding of Kant’s presupposition of a plan “in advance” of it. The article is structured in three steps. The initial step involves a comparison between Kant’s and Hegel’s conceptions of reason, which serves to highlight the different status of Kant’s a priori and “observative” reason from a theoretical point of view. The second step focuses on the Introduction and Preliminary Mathematical Concepts of his Physical Geography, in order to develop the problem indicated by the quotation in the title, namely that we must presuppose a plan of our empirical cognitions “even before we attain them”. The third step, finally, attempts to prove that the dynamic underlying Kant’s Physical Geography corresponds to the theory of the appearance of appearance formulated by Kant in the Opus postumum.

Un geografo di nome Kant

Franco Farinelli — 2025-02-25

The article aims to provide some insights into the cartographic scheme that underlies Kant’s critical philosophy. To achieve this, it begins with a brief contextualisation of Kant within the geographical revolution of the XVIII century and then moves on to analyse the inner articulation of his Physical Geography. The result is the exhibition of Kant’s presupposition of a plan, or idea (focus imaginarius), to the same construction of his philosophy. It is this idea that, through projection, makes cartographically possible the critique.

Planetary Spaces and Maps of Reason. Remarks on Kant’s Cartographic Imagination

Tommaso Morawski — 2025-02-25

Focusing on the cartographic imagination of the European Enlightenment (1650-1800), this essay seeks to discuss the role of the cartographic representation of the Earth in the construction of a planetary space, as well as its function as a model for measuring human knowledge and as a metaphor for its systematization. More specifically, by analyzing Kant’s geographical metaphors, I will reconstruct how the modern project of conquering the world as picture took shape in the design of the Kantian «cosmogram». I plan to show that the cartographic representation of the terrestrial sphere is not only the scopic model of Enlightenment planetary consciousness, but also the monogram of Kant’s architectonic system, and as such the operative and imaginative matrix of his cartographic reason.

The Sensibility of Kant’s Globus Sphere Critical Philosophy, Physical Geography and the Situated Subject

Anna Enström — 2025-02-25

This essay explores the metaphorical and conceptual significance of the globus sphere in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Physical Geography. Through its integration of sensibility and corporeal spatiality into the heart of Kantian philosophy, the essay argues that the spherical shape accommodates a situated notion of the subject. A conception that further nuances the “hard-edged” dominance of reason and rationality over sensibility, which often is associated with Kant’s thought. While recognizing the viable critiques of Kant’s Eurocentrism and racism in Physical Geography, the essay concludes by demonstrating how Kant’s concept of the sphere – emphasizing that neither Earth nor reason has a fixed center – implies that Kantian critique could likewise serve as a potential alternative to colonial and hierarchical modes of thought, thereby indicating a path toward the notion of a universal reason of a truly global character.

The Mind and the Map. Kant and the Image of Reality

Francesco Valagussa — 2025-02-25

This article aims to show the relationship between representation, subject and thing-in-itself in Kantian thought, in the light of a cartographic analogy articulated through the triad map, mind and territory. From this point of view, the mind is to be understood as a threshold, as a place of passage between the thing and the map. This leads us, on the one hand, to see in Peirce’s semiotics a revival and reworking of Kantian thought. On the other hand, it leads us to the alternative between Grenze (bound) and Schranke (limit), which will be analysed in parallel with a pivotal problem in philosophy, namely that of the limit between being and not-being, as articulated in Plato’s Sophist.

«We lay the path by walking on it»: Kant, Bergson and the Power of Space

Alessandra Campo — 2025-02-25

It is usual to oppose Kant and Bergson as the cartographic reason and its other. Yet, considering the role that space plays in the philosophy of both, it is possible not only to point beyond this opposition. The mediality of space, its natural schematic property, makes it possible to identify a significant proximity between space as a pure form of sensibility and the pure perception with which Bergson opens Matter and Memory. The aim of the article is to argue in favour of this kinship by considering above all the role that space plays in the first edition of the Fourth Paralogism of Pure Reason and in the Opus postumum through the filter of the arguments used by Bergson, in the third chapter of Creative Evolution, to demonstrate the simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence.

The Enlightened Reflection. Kant and the Philosophical Care for Reason

Giulio Goria — 2025-02-25

The paper intends to investigate the task that Kant assigns to reason to orient itself in thought. For understanding the meaning of this task, we utilize reflection as the means to carry forward as best as possible the self-reflective nature of reason. What status does reflection assume, then? And what function does it perform in determining especially the activity of philosophy and the philosopher? We therefore propose a reading in which reflection in transcendental philosophy cannot be separated from the practical use of reason, and indeed reason, insofar as it is reflective, primarily indicates a conduct of thought oriented toward the care of supreme ends.

An Apology for Feeling

Stelios Gadris — 2025-02-25

In what follows I will try to establish the role feeling plays, primarily, in Kant’s worldly conception of philosophy – some remarks will refer to its role in theoretical philosophy as well. I will claim that it is through feeling that we are able to situate ourselves within the world both physical and human. Situating ourselves within the world entails a broadening of our horizon, first and far most geographically and then in thought, both contributing to our moving beyond or overcoming what is private, be that feeling or judgment, that is, moving beyond self-interest. From the bare feeling of existence to the feeling of differentiating the directions in space in the physical world, and, finally, to the feeling of reflection Kant shows how this broadening can and should take place, namely, by broadening our way of thinking.

Kant and Space as Event

Edoardo De Santis — 2025-02-25

This text aims to highlight the specific practical value of Kantian philosophy starting from its reflection on space. The representation of space determines a reversal of the terms of reference between state jurisdiction and the free will of the subject. The latter is sensitive to any performative instance coming from outside, which represents the very meaning of its passage through historical time as a sentient entity. It is precisely the mastery authorized by the understanding of the abyssal character of one’s own existence that opens to a potentially all-encompassing praxis, as freedom to act in the world starting from the imposition of the categorical imperative in the horizon of moral law. The free will of the individual becomes a worldly praxis adhering to the ethical law that identifies the relationship of reciprocal implication between knowledge of man and knowledge of the world.

The Knowledge of the Human Being in Kant’s Anthropology: Where Subject and Object cross Paths

Gualtiero Lorini — 2025-02-25

Through reconstructing some of the methodologically distinctive features of Kant’s anthropology, beyond its pragmatic characterization, the paper aims to provide some keys to situating this discipline with respect to the critical-transcendental project. This analysis outlines a particular kind of normativity connected to anthropological research, a normativity to be understood as a regularity that emerges from the observation of the dominant tendencies of human beings in their relationship with their fellow humans. From this derives a peculiar concept of «comparative universality», which underlies an a posteriori objectivity. This meaning of objectivity, admittedly weaker than that deduced a priori, is nevertheless capable of bringing out the need for concrete conditions–though not sufficient in themselves–for achieving the moralization of humankind, a goal that in Kant’s view can only be realized in history by pointing towards a cosmopolitan horizon.

Kant and the Spectre of War

Félix Duque — 2025-02-25

The aim of this paper is to arouse suspicion about the latent meaning and scope of Kant’s essay Towards a perpetual peace, regarding his idea of an abstract equality, which can begin to annul individual men, different from each other (each differing even from each other, within each other), in the name of an imaginary Man kath’exochén: a Free Being, Equal, Subject to the Law. Subject, of course, to a Law that he repeats and recites over and over again: Freedom, Equality, Subjection.

Feeling Data: New Perspectives for the Aesthetic Experience

Saverio Macrì — 2025-02-25

The production of unprecedented amounts of data across all sectors of society stands out as the defining feature of the present age. Thanks to an all-reaching net of pervasive technologies, it is now possible to draw out data from every entity or event on the planet. Artistic practice provides a suitable stage for the attempt to isolate specific expressive and signifying features out of the indistinct mass of data flowing through the digital realm. This article focuses on a relatively under-explored strand of research, where technology interacts with abstract data in order to extract their “aesthetic sense”. Such an expression addresses the peculiar dynamics enabling art to move beyond the purely informative function of data, towards a different goal – designing experiences that turn the audience into perceptive participants, engaged in the otherwise imperceptible events and relations that are recorded and communicated by data. This kind of aesthetic experience presents interesting implications for philosophical enquiry. Through expressive means that are constantly reshaped by the interaction with digital technologies, contemporary art provides fertile ground for a philosophy of events and relations. This framework is analysed in the present essay by comparing the perspective of three philosophers: Alfred N. Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze.

Ethics of Cognitive Distance in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Sara Dashti — 2025-02-25

In the past few decades, there has been a flood of investigations into Beckett’s most celebrated play Waiting for Godot. The play has been explored in terms of the way the protagonists endure affliction, and absurdity. These readings, one way or another, have mostly highlighted the protagonists’ fruitless search for human values and meaning. In contrast with these accounts, this paper aims to focus on the interconnection between the concept of cognitive distance and ethics to show how the two protagonists in the play, despite lack of meaning, portray rewarding overtones of ethical relation to the Other. This ethical distance helps them establish not only an ethical relationship with one another, but also an ethical interaction with alterity in general. Drawing on what the philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas, conceives of the concept of distance in his ethical Same-Other relation, this paper concludes that Beckett’s couple can also be portrayed as figures with a valuable Same-Other relation regardless of predominant anguish and absurdity in their lives.

Thriving Together: Enhancing Quality of Life through Biodiversity Conservation

Andrea Nicolini — 2025-02-25

The article deals with biodiversity by showing the origin of the concept and the impact it had in international policies and public debate. In the second part, it investigates the concept of quality of life by reconstructing the philosophical debate that gave rise to the subjective, objective and hybrid theories that seek a synthesis between the previous two. The article concludes by describing the University of Florence’s “Percepisco” project coordinated by Andrea Coppi and Matteo Galletti that shows a concrete case of excellent synergy between quality of life and biodiversity protection.

Note e recensioni

Teresa Masini — 2025-02-25