From the mutual opposition to the operational confluence: the harmonious interlacing of original acquisition, generic preformation, and transcendental schema in Kant

• Grant number: 13/18109-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 16, 2014
• End date: January 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Ubirajara Rancan de Azevedo Marques
• Grantee: Ubirajara Rancan de Azevedo Marques
• Host Investigator: Stefano Poggi
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

Abstract

The "operational confluence" I will be talking about here relates to the specific constitution of certain concepts in Kant's philosophy that are, actually, synthetic concepts which harbor in themselves mutually opposed terms. The characteristic syntheticness of such concepts produces a convergence among their constitutive elements with the purpose of solving difficulties that could not be solved by the elements themselves. Converging opposition occurs, for example, in three cases: "[die] ursprüngliche Erwerbung / acquisitio originaria"; "[die] generische Präformation"; "[das] transscendentale Schema". In the two first concepts, one can at once see that the very expressions fuse [and converge] the terms of a previous conceptual opposition while maintaining and trying to overcome them [nurture versus nature; preformism versus epigenesis]. In the third concept, however, "schema" is, so to speak, the very emblem of an "operational confluence" to the degree that, to perform its prescribed function (mediate [vermitteln] the process of sensibilization of the concept/conceptualization of intuition), it itself must already contain something that makes the mediation possible. Rather than just undertaking an individualized study of any such examples of synthetic concepts, the hypothesis to be developed in this project aims at establishing the protocol of a deep articulation among the three concept mentioned above, to wit, "originary acquisition", "generic preformation" and "transcendental schema". Regarding this latter representation, my discussion will actually be about the schema for sensory empirical concepts or those about which Kant himself says: "Dieser Schematismus unseres Verstandes in Ansehung der Erscheinungen und ihrer bloßen Form ist eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele, deren wahre Handgriffe wir der Natur schwerlich jemals abrathen und sie unverdeckt vor Augen legen werden." (AU)