Abstract

: The article examines the metapher proposed by Kant in order to clarify how our mind attains knowledge of reality, and consequently according to what method we should work out a new metaphysics. The judge succeeds in knowing a juridical reality in so far as he asks the witnesses questions which he himself formulates. Hence Kant draws the conclusion that reason learns from nature only what she herself has put into nature. Now the problem lies in clarifying how the active-creative moment and the receptive moment in human knowledge refer to one another . Kant acknowledges initially the complementarity of both moments. But since he had failed to grasp clearly the real distinction between the anticipatory-constructive capacity of our understanding and the following critical-reflective capacity of the same he ended up by making the first moment prevail unilaterally. The consequence is the idealist interpretation of knowing and being to which the first Critique leads. Also the later attempts could not overcome the impasse. This would have required both revisimg radically the intuition-principle in its sensist version and to acknowledge that the dynamism of intellect refers to reality, although it needs the data of experience to know it