The impact of Kant’s philosophical work on the different directions of the development of science and culture in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries is so great that posterity will undoubtedly not hesitate to establish a parallel between it and the millenarian influence that Plato and Aristotle have exerted on Western history and culture. The breath of his theoretical and practical influence during more than two centuries surpasses that of any other figure of modernity. This is especially the case of the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions since their origin, in their debates with scientific positivism, and during the complex course of their subsequent development.
Indeed, Kant inspires the first defenders of the formal sciences and the human sciences from 1870 onwards: in the schools of Baden and Marburg and in the development of contemporary neo-criticism with Dilthey’s hermeneutics and later with Cassirer’s critical symbolism. The first gives a decisive boost to the “critique of historical reason” as well as to human and cultural sciences. The second highlights the role of Kant’s transcendental imagination in the constitution of symbolic thought, language and art.
The emergence of Husserl’s phenomenology in 1900 and its subsequent development draws on both neo-Kantian schools, as well as Dilthey. A little later, Scheler, inspired by Husserl’s concept of a material a priori, proposes a “material ethics of values” in critical dialogue with Kantian formalism, while Heidegger—in debate with Kant the “metaphysician”—is responsible for the turn from transcendental phenomenology towards a hermeneutics of historical existence, which gains new impetus both with Gadamer and, later, with Ricoeur. Several other figures in phenomenology and hermeneutics represent ramifications of this strand, such as Hannah Arendt and her sui generis reappropriation of Kant’s “reflective judgment” in the realm of practical philosophy.
Even today, Kant is an unavoidable reference for “Continental” philosophers interested in exploring the philosophical-epistemological foundations of the physical and/or cognitive sciences.
In short, Kant’s work continues to be a philosophical reference for the main reflections in current science and culture. For this reason, the XX Journeys on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics of the Peruvian Circle of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics is dedicated this year to the commemoration of Emmanuel Kant’s 300 birth anniversary, and his legacy.
If you are interested in participating, please send your tentative title and abstract to cipher@pucp.edu.pe until de 15th of august 2024.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
- Andrés Francisco Contreras (Universidad de Antioquia)
- Steven Crowell (Rice University)
- Thomas Nenon (University of Memphis)
- Dennis Schmidt (Western Sydney University)