Ritter
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Philosophisches Seminar » Allgemein » Prof. Dr. Katia Saporiti » Ritter
Current research project
| Title / Titel | Transcendental illusion and the "bewitchment of our understanding by the means of our language": Kant and the later Wittgenstein | ||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Original title / Originaltitel | Transzendentaler Schein und die "Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache": Kant und später Wittgenstein | ||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | Wittgenstein’s critique of the language of philosophy is a variation of an idea which plays a significant role in Kant’s critique of metaphysics. Like Kant, he isolates “propositions” which, contrary to appearance, are unsuitable for asserting something about the world. Thus, in eminent philosophical uses of the following sentences no statement, true or false, is achieved: “The world has a beginning in time”, “There is nothing simple in the world”, “The soul is substance” (Kant); “Another person can’t have my pains” and “Only you can know if you had that intention” (Wittgenstein). The crucial idea in their analysis of error is that features of our conceptual means are mistaken for properties of things in the world. The present project investigates the limits of Kantian readings of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy as well as its possibilities. It starts with the key idea, common to both philosophers, that under certain conditions concepts used in utterances merely reflect their own characteristics and stop being about something in the world. It will be shown that it is on this very basic level that essentialism and representationalism (of which cognitivism is a species as well as sceptical idealism) are contested. Whether a given problem is empirical or conceptual is plainly of general interest, particularly, if there is a tendency of the conceptual to seem factual. |
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| Publications / Publikationen | Ritter, B (2009). What Is Kant's Refutation of Idealims Designed to Refute? Abstracta, (Special Issue IV: On Q. Cassam's THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE):58-84. | ||
| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, essentialism, representationalism, pseudo-statements, transcendental idealism, ordinary-language philosophy | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
No project-specific funding doctoral dissertation |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | May 2008 to Dec 2012 |