Kant, Fichte, and the metaphysics of modernity: reconsidering the importance of subjectivity

• Grant number: 12/14710-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: December 16, 2012
• End date: February 07, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Metaphysics
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Costa Mattos
• Grantee: Fernando Costa Mattos
• Host Investigator: Volker Gerhardt
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas (CCNH). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Humboldt University, Germany
• Associated research grant: 08/53030-6 - Morals, politics and law: autonomy and critical theory, AP.TEM

Abstract

Having as a starting point the polemic between Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Henrich in the 1980s (about post-metaphysical thinking and the possibility of metaphysics nowadays), this research intends to investigate the notion of subjectivity in the works of Kant and Fichte. I believe this notion is central to the constitution of the metaphysical field which is proper to modernity understood in its widest sense, i.e., as covering all those reflections that, begining in the modern age, continue through the contemporary, constituting what Habermas calls the "philosophical discourse of modernity". The stage of the research I intend to realize in Berlin has as its main goals: to discuss those questions with Volker Gerhardt and his research group, with which I have been in touch for the past four years, and to research new bibliography on the theme, having in view the increasing interest of young german authors in the metaphysical question (as well as Habermas newest book, "Post-Metaphysical Thinking II"). (AU)