The maxims of human understanding as rules of the public use of reason in Kant

• Grant number: 17/22267-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Monique Hulshof
• Grantee: Vinicius Pinto de Carvalho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The concepts of public use of reason and private use of reason are fundamental to the Kantian conception of Enlightenment. The private use of reason is characterized by a certain passivity of reason, that is submitted to some sort of external authority and follows rules imposed by this authority. The public use of reason, on the contrary, is described as an active use of reason, on which rules are not abandoned, but rather they are provided by reason itself. Our research aims to investigate what does it mean to say that reason follows rules (or principles) that it "gives itself" and what are the rules that reason must follow so that its use can be characterized as public. With this in mind, we will first analyze the text An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? in order to obtain a clear differentiation between public use and private use of reason. In a second moment, based on the text What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? and on certain passages from the Critique of Judgment (§ 40), we shall analyze the "maxims of human understanding", seeking to establish a link between the maxims and the concept of public use of reason. (AU)