In this work I seek to explain the relationship between the substantially different characterizations of the public sphere made by Kant. In his writings on the Enlightenment, the productive component of this space is emphasized and the conditions that allow social and political progress to be fostered are identified. On the other hand, in the texts on the idea of a universal history, its antagonistic dynamics are rather emphasized. At first glance, the teleological history according to a plan of nature (...) seems to relegate the public sphere and the public use of reason to a secondary role. However, given the epistemic status of the philosophy of history, I will seek to highlight that, on the contrary, this regulative idea only has philosophical significance due to the effects of its public dissemination. Thus, what motivated the elaboration of a philosophy of history was rather the political potential of public thought, and, thus, the teleology of history is secondary to the conception of the public sphere. (shrink)

The criticism of Immanuel Kant’s logic commenced with the advent of the so-called ‘new logic’ in the 20th century. One particular passage from the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason has been a source of contention, where Kant asserted that logic has not taken a step forward or backward since Aristotle (B VIII). In Kant scholarship, one current strategy to avoid this criticism is to relocate Kant within the domain of philosophy of logic or by segregating his general (...) logic from modern formal systems. In this paper, it will be contended that this strategy is too weak, given that the B-preface has currently been analyzed in a markedly divergent manner by the so-called ‘methodological interpretation’. In his methodology and history of science of the B-preface, Kant means something different by progress and regression than what his 20th-century critics assume he meant. By examining what Kant and his critics considered to be progress and regress in science and logic, good reasons can be put forward for the argument that Kant was correct in his assertion that logic has not gone a step forward or backward. (shrink)