The Problem of Order in Kant: from natural order to the rational order

• Grant number: 24/01199-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2024
• End date: February 29, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Monique Hulshof
• Grantee: Giovanni Sarto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The concept of order used to be inseparable from the representation of an ordainer, to which human intelligence immediately turns. However, how should it be understood in the context of Kant's Critical Philosophy, given that the philosopher sought to break with the fundamental solidarity that grounded the relationship between God and the order of the world in the Only Possible Argument? This discrepancy is not only detectable between the pre-critical and the critical works. Our hypothesis is that this concept is in question within Kant's critical philosophy. That is why it is necessary to refer to it as a problem, which in turn must be interpreted as the inducer of relevant conceptual shifts for the fate of the oeuvre. To prove this, we will start from the Only Possible Argument, showing how, subsequently, natural order will be thematized, considering the results of the Ideal of Pure Reason, in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. However, difficulties inherent to the very formulation of the problem of order in this text leads the philosopher to reevaluate it in a new light in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, in which the theme of the teleological system of nature comes to the fore and inaugurates the possibility of man being considered the agent of the establishment of a rational order.