The Image of the Universe and Its Purpose: Kant on Hypotyposis and Functional Cosmology

Silvia De Bianchi

Abstract

This contribution focuses on Kant’s doctrine of hypotyposis as deployed in the Critique of Judgment and explores its implications for his view of what I call “functional cosmology”. Despite the number of metaphors used by Kant in the pre-critical works, it is only in the early 1790s that his system could account for the use and function of metaphors and symbolic representation in the natural sciences connecting them to aesthetics and ethics. This account was also stimulated by the debates surrounding Plato’s dialogues and Neoplatonic texts at the end of the 18^th century. Therefore, this paper suggests that Kant offered his own solution to the problem of thinking of the universe as an organism within the limits of transcendental philosophy.

The Image of the Universe and Its Purpose: Kant on Hypotyposis and Functional Cosmology

From the book Bilddenken und Morphologie

Abstract

Chapters in this book (24)