Abstract

This book is a printed dissertation directed by Norbert Hinske and defended at Trier in 1996. It deals with the relationship between formal and transcendental logic from the standpoint of the history of Kant’s development, of Kant’s sources, and, more generally, of the history of concepts. In 1932, Klaus Reich summarized the status quaestionis thus, “Observing the destiny of Kant’s sketch on pure general or formal logic, which lies at the foundation of both the edifice and the realization of the Critique of Pure Reason, one cannot help to marvel at the discrepancy of the opinions of the interpreters and of Kant himself”. Vázquez Lobeiras mentions three main Kant interpretations in the twentieth century: one based on the theory of knowledge, the second based on metaphysics, and the third based on the history of logic. She declares to follow the logical-historical interpretation. The first chapter is dedicated to a detailed reconstruction of the status quaestionis, beginning with Kant’s contemporaries, going through the famous controversy between Norman Kemp-Smith and Herbert Paton, the former maintaining the primacy of transcendental against formal logic, the latter the opposite, and ending with Gerold Prauss and Giorgio Tonelli. The second chapter explores the fate of the distinction between transcendental and formal logic in the history of Kant’s development. Vázquez Lobeiras concentrates her attention on a famous section of the Critique of Pure Reason, the “Introduction: Idea of a Transcendental Logic”. Her intention is to interpret it by relating it with pertinent passages from Kant’s Lectures on Logic, Lectures on Metaphysics, the program on the False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, and the dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis. “Form” is the concept she focuses on, on the basis of an impressive list of parallels she has found that connect the distinction between formal and transcendental logic with the distinction between usus logicus and usus realis of the dissertatio. She points to a telling argument Kant makes in Reflection 1599, that namely the subject of formal logic is “the usage of the understanding in general,” while that of metaphysics are “the objects of pure reason.” But what would these “objects of pure reason” be? Vázquez Lobeiras refers them to the rationis purae objecta of the dissertatio, which are free from sensible determinations while remaining subject to the laws on the intellectual world. In this reflection she sees the stage that immediately precedes the “Introduction: Idea of a Transcendental Logic” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The third chapter concludes by investigating the progressive establishment of new boundaries set by Kant to metaphysics.