ON THE SOCIAL AND EMPIRICAL NATURE OF KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ANTHRO­POCENTRISM: THE ESSENCE AND LOCA­TION OF “HUMAN NATURE”

• Main Author: Oleg Leszczak
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vilnius University 2014-04-01
• Series: Respectus Philologicus
• Subjects: Kant; Philosophical Discourse; Anthropocentrism; Transcendentalism; Empiricism; Sociology; Humanity; Human Nature
• Online Access: http://www.rephi.knf.vu.lt/images/25_30/2_11%20Respectus%202014%202530%20Online%20Issn_Leszcak.pdf

This paper presents a conceptual-discursi­ve analysis of Immanuel Kant’s texts from the viewpoint of the ontological essence of humanity (the so-called “human nature”). On the basis of a functional-pragmatic methodology, the author proposes a metalanguage of pragmatic conceptual analysis for Kant’s philosophical discourse, along with his own idea of a human as a person, human being, individual, character, and bearer of huma­nity’s traits. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles of structuralization of human personality, and raises fundamental methodological questions about the essence of humanity. Part Two analyzes Kant’s notion of human nature in both the formal aspect and that of systematic localization, and also considers issues of social pragmatics and the empirical motivation of human nature, issues which arise from a discu­rsive analysis of texts by Kant. The author aims to prove that Kant was one of the first philosophers to see the specificity of humanity in social relations, and presented it, neither in a causal-deterministic form (as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation), nor an essentialistic form (as a timeless transcendental essence), but in the form of a function of an individual’s social experience (both pragmatic-teleological and tran­scendental-aposteriori).