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

Abstract

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.