Abstract

Few philosophers have thought as long and as deeply as Kant about the nature of philosophy. His reflections on this topic did not come to an end with the Critique of Pure Reason. In what follows I am going to argue that in his Opus postumum, Kant came to realize that the conception of philosophy presented in the first Critique cannot be upheld. I will suggest that Kant’s numerous attempts in the first fascicle of the Opus postumum to redefine transcendental philosophy reflect this insight. These attempts are thus not to be interpreted as signs of senility, as has usually been done, but as indicative of a new and heightened level of reflection. In this sense one can, I suggest, speak of a “postcritical” phase in Kant’s thinking, comparable to the so-called critical and precritical phases. This does not, however, mean that after 1790 Kant returned to a form of dogmatism, but that in his last work a conception of philosophy emerges that differs as much from that developed in the first Critique as the latter does from the one to be found in his precritical writings. I shall look at all three conceptions in turn. I begin with the precritical one.