Método e sistema da razão em Kant : uma investigação sobre a estrutura e a legitimidade do pensamento crítico-transcendental

Abstract

This PhD research presents a reconstruction and a defense of Kant’s critical-transcendental philosophy concerning the problem of the system of reason. The thesis presented here sustains that Kant’s approach to the problem is grounded on the self-sufficiency of the theoretical and practical domains of reason. For this purpose, it is argued that Kant’s approach departs from the guarantee of the necessity of a specific method for philosophy in relation to mathematics and ends up with the critical justification of this method as synthetic a priori. It is also argued that the Kantian position maintains its singularity while conceiving the theoretical and practical determinations of reason as both active and determinative in their own domains. The structure of the thesis is grounded upon four steps of argumentation. Initially, the (in)dependent justification of philosophy in relation to mathematics in Leibniz, Wolff and the Kantian position in the 1750s is taken into account. Secondly, Kant’s account of the method of philosophy as analytic in the 1760s and its reconsideration in the 1770s is pointed out. After that, the critical justification of the method of philosophy as synthetic a priori in the enterprise of the deduction of the categories is set forth. Finally, a consideration of the problem of the system of philosophy in the 1780s and 1790s is carried out. As a result of these four moments of investigation, the conclusion reached is that Kant’s approach to the problem of the system of reason is better read, in his own words, as a “system of the Critic”. This being the formula of a philosophy that, as Weltbegriff, is nourished by both theoretical and practical determinations of reason, and, as such, counts on the consideration of a plan which is precisely conceived according to its Schulbegriff