Philosophy
Subject:: The Idea of Transcendental Critique (in Kant and Heidegger)
Supervisor: Prof. Gabriel Motzkin, Dr. Michael Roubach
Abstract: The overarching question that the proposed research aims to explore concerns the meaning of Kant’s idea of transcendental critique and its possible contribution to the self-understanding of philosophy, understood both as a distinctive mode of inquiry and as a tradition with a temporally-unique perspective on its own history, present, and future. The latter issue will be treated by attempting to interpret the radical character of Heidegger’s early thinking as critical in a Kantian sense. Focusing on Heidegger’s early Freiburg lecture-courses, I intend to trace and bring out a particular strand in his way of thinking that can be qualified as continuing Kant’s critical tradition by engaging in a critical quest for self-orientation towards a radical self-understanding of philosophy. Based on this reading, I shall try to reveal the covered-up and forgotten radical dimension of Kant’s critical project in analogy with Heidegger’s critical quest and thematize it in Heideggerian terms, confronting thereby the contemporary self-understanding of our philosophical tradition as post-Kantian. By calling attention to the critical moment which precedes and prefigures Kant’s transcendental inquiry, I hope to provide a faithful yet original account of Transcendental Critique as indicating a truly radical idea of philosophy and the philosophical tradition, aiming at a critical consideration of its possible relevance (along an earnest reflection on its limits) from a contemporary point of view.
President Scholarship 2020/21