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On the Understanding as the Faculty of Synthesis in Kant’s Pre-Critical Thought / Volonté, Lucia (CC BY)

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Title:
Open Philosophy
Publication:
Warsaw: De Gruyter Poland
Note:
Gesehen am 13.07.18
Open Access
Namensnennung 4.0 International
Scope:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2543-8875
ZDB-ID:
2935964-8 ZDB
VÖBB-Katalog:
35273980
Keywords:
Zeitschrift
Classification:
Philosophie
DDC Group:
100 Philosophie
Collection:
Philosophie
Copyright:
Rights reserved
Accessibility:
Free Access
Title:
Open Philosophy
Publication:
Warsaw: De Gruyter Poland
Note:
Gesehen am 13.07.18
Open Access
Namensnennung 4.0 International
Scope:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2543-8875
ZDB-ID:
2935964-8 ZDB
VÖBB-Katalog:
35273980
Keywords:
Zeitschrift
Classification:
Philosophie
DDC Group:
100 Philosophie
Collection:
Philosophie
Copyright:
Rights reserved
Accessibility:
Free Access

Article

Author:
Volonté, Lucia
Title:
On the Understanding as the Faculty of Synthesis in Kant’s Pre-Critical Thought
Publication:
Warsaw: De Gruyter Poland, 2026
Language:
English
Information:
Abstract: Kant’s definition of the understanding as the spontaneity of cognition is a cornerstone of his transcendental philosophy. In the Critique, Kant presents the understanding as a discursive faculty that brings forth the synthesis of intuitions according to a priori rules; yet he does not make explicit why spontaneity and synthesis are identified within this characterization. To clarify this implicit connection, this article examines Kant’s intellectual trajectory regarding the faculty of the understanding: from a faculty of distinct cognition to the spontaneous source of synthetic unity. Drawing on Kant’s early theoretical writings and marginalia in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, this analysis traces three pivotal stages of Kant’s pre-critical conception of the understanding: 1) the rejection of the law of identity as the universal formal ground of cognition in the 1760s because of its inadequacy to account for real grounding relations; 2) the consequent distinction between two irreducible forms of cognition, synthetic coordination versus analytic subordination, each governed by distinct formal principles; and 3) the account for a priori synthetic laws in terms of pure fundamental concepts, later the categories, which are grounded in the spontaneity of the understanding. Following these steps, in the mid-1770s Kant arrives at the novel conception of the understanding as the faculty determining the objective synthetic form of cognition, and of its spontaneity as the highest principle of the synthetic unity of experience.
Scope:
Online-Ressource
Note:
Open Access
Archivierung/Langzeitarchivierung gewährleistet
Keywords:
pre-critical philosophy ; spontaneity ; understanding-sensibility distinction ; discursive cognition ; empirical cognition ; categories
Classification:
Philosophie
URN:
urn:nbn:de:101:1-2608270603563.801642513575
Collection:
Philosophie
Copyright:
CC BY
Accessibility:
Free Access
Author:
Volonté, Lucia
Title:
On the Understanding as the Faculty of Synthesis in Kant’s Pre-Critical Thought
Publication:
Warsaw: De Gruyter Poland, 2026
Language:
English
Information:
Abstract: Kant’s definition of the understanding as the spontaneity of cognition is a cornerstone of his transcendental philosophy. In the Critique, Kant presents the understanding as a discursive faculty that brings forth the synthesis of intuitions according to a priori rules; yet he does not make explicit why spontaneity and synthesis are identified within this characterization. To clarify this implicit connection, this article examines Kant’s intellectual trajectory regarding the faculty of the understanding: from a faculty of distinct cognition to the spontaneous source of synthetic unity. Drawing on Kant’s early theoretical writings and marginalia in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, this analysis traces three pivotal stages of Kant’s pre-critical conception of the understanding: 1) the rejection of the law of identity as the universal formal ground of cognition in the 1760s because of its inadequacy to account for real grounding relations; 2) the consequent distinction between two irreducible forms of cognition, synthetic coordination versus analytic subordination, each governed by distinct formal principles; and 3) the account for a priori synthetic laws in terms of pure fundamental concepts, later the categories, which are grounded in the spontaneity of the understanding. Following these steps, in the mid-1770s Kant arrives at the novel conception of the understanding as the faculty determining the objective synthetic form of cognition, and of its spontaneity as the highest principle of the synthetic unity of experience.
Scope:
Online-Ressource
Note:
Open Access
Archivierung/Langzeitarchivierung gewährleistet
Keywords:
pre-critical philosophy ; spontaneity ; understanding-sensibility distinction ; discursive cognition ; empirical cognition ; categories
Classification:
Philosophie
URN:
urn:nbn:de:101:1-2608270603563.801642513575
Collection:
Philosophie
Copyright:
CC BY
Accessibility:
Free Access

Contents

Table of contents

  • Open Philosophy (Rights reserved)
  • Pathologies of Passion / Young, Niki (CC BY)
  • Narrating Places / Danani, Carla (CC BY)
  • Healing Disorders: Reparative Narratives in Aby Warburg and Tsitsi Dangarembga / Nicastro, Clio (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Myth of a Unified Metaphysics: A Contrarian Reading of Heidegger’s History of Being / Kerkmann, Jan (CC BY)
  • From Narrative Redemptions to the Ethical Value of Micrological Reparations / Pierosara, Silvia (CC BY)
  • When Ideal Types Become Pseudo-objective. Migranticization, Narratives, and the Role of the Arts / Helfrich, Aniela (CC BY)
  • Limits of Subalternity: Victim and Perpetrator in Spivak / Yang, Shanyi (CC BY)
  • Embodied Universality: Fichte, Walīullāh, and the Paradox of Universal Norms / Iqbal, Zafar (CC BY)
  • From Ratio to Logos: Reconstructing Participatory Ontologism in the Ern–Frank Controversy / Jong, Abbas (CC BY)
  • God as Intrinsic Formal Cause: A Platonic Response to Aseity-Based Objections / Bennett, Samuel Walker (CC BY)
  • Ideal Ego and Ego-Ideal in Lacan’s Seminar I / Harman, Graham (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Wound of the Event. Experience, Narration, and Reparation in Italo Calvino / Cavalleri, Matteo (CC BY)
  • Between Reason and Nature. A Comparison of Kant’s and Schleiermacher’s Understandings of Spontaneity / Glatzel, Matthis (CC BY)
  • Summons and Counter-Summons: Machiavelli, Rhetoric, and Political Intervention in Fichte’s Later Thought (1807–1813) / Rampazzo Bazzan, Marco (CC BY)
  • From Infinite Understanding to Absolute I. The Unity of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy in Fichte’s Response to Maimon’s Rationalism / Puzzolo, Davide (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Role of Spontaneity in Paul Natorp’s Concrete Subjectivity / Papa, Mattia (CC BY)
  • I Identify as Reason. Fichte’s First Principle of Philosophy and Rational Self-Realization / Lewin, Michael (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Wissenschaftslehre and the Philosophical Life / Bjarkö, Fredrik (CC BY)
  • An Apology of Praxis / Gristina, Silvestre (CC BY)
  • Socrates and Biopolitics: An Essay on Care, Truth-Telling, and Destituent Power / Cimino, Antonio (CC BY)
  • Intellectual Intuition and Rule-Following in Fichte’s Doctrine of Science / Schmidt, Andreas (CC BY)
  • Dualities of Spontaneity: Adorno’s Rethinking of a Kantian Concept / Bermas-Dawes, Joseph (CC BY)
  • Clerdon´s Comeback / Froese, Ursula (CC BY)
  • Liquid Realism: Hauntology, Lack, and Mourning as Method / Edgar, Robert (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Jena Wissenschaftslehre as an Answer to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment / Radrizzani, Ives (CC BY)
  • Selfhood Beyond Relational and Anti-Relational Ontologies / Park, Hyun Jung (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Melancholia of Extinction: Psychoanalysis and Speculative Realism at the End / Tyrer, Ben (CC BY)
  • Anthropology of Unhappiness / Bartelmus, Martin (CC BY)
  • Simulation and Representation: A Thomist Theory of Video Games / Porretta, Michael (CC BY)
  • Eco-Delirium: Realism in Environmental Excess / Dutta, Ritam (CC BY)
  • Metamodernism and Paranoia / van den Akker, Robin (CC BY)
  • At the Limits of Narrative Reparation / Labate, Sergio (CC BY)
  • Translating Epistemology into Ontology: Two Versions of an Argument / Macho Román, Ramón (CC BY)
  • On the Understanding as the Faculty of Synthesis in Kant’s Pre-Critical Thought / Volonté, Lucia (CC BY)
  • Reparation, Taken to the Extreme / Labate, Sergio (CC BY)
  • Kant on the Discursive Spontaneity of Finite Understanding / Ganzinger, Florian (CC BY)
  • Integrating Ethics of Technology into a Serious Game: The Case of Tethics / Perperidis, Giannis (CC BY)
  • Digital Friends and Empathy Blindness / Bangsgaard, Alberte Romme (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Power of Predication and Quantification / Zalta, Edward N. (CC BY)
  • Playable Concepts? For a Critique of Videogame Reason / Pezzano, Giacomo (CC BY)
  • Nonexistent Objects: The Avicenna Transform / Bäck, Allan (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Gamification of Games and Inhibited Play / Egerton, Karl (CC BY)
  • Did Aristotle have a Doctrine of Existential Import? / Yi, Byeong-uk (CC BY)
  • What Makes a Prediction Arbitrary? A Proposal / Coakley, Mathew (CC BY)
  • Can and Should AI Help Us Quantify Philosophical Health? / de Miranda, Luis (CC BY)
  • What Do Science and Historical Denialists Deny – If Any – When Addressing Certainties in Wittgenstein’s Sense? / Ariso, Jose Maria (CC BY)
  • Battlefields of Play & Games: From a Method of Comparative Ludology to a Strategy of Ecosophic Ludic Architecture / Mouzakitis, Stavros A. (CC BY)
  • Aristotle and Sartre on Eros and Love-Robots / Lombard, Cécilia Andrée Monique (CC BY)
  • A Relational Psychoanalytic Analysis of Ovid’s “Narcissus and Echo”: Toward the Obstinate Persistence of the Relational / Telios, Thomas (CC BY)
  • A Unifying Double-Reference Approach to Semantic Paradoxes: From the White-Horse-Not-Horse Paradox and the Ultimate-Unspeakable Paradox to the Liar Paradox in View of the Principle of Noncontradiction / Mou, Bo (CC BY)
  • Technically Getting Off: On the Hope, Disgust, and Time of Robo-Erotics / McNealis, Rachel (CC BY)
  • Empty Reference in Sixteenth-Century Nominalism: John Mair’s Case / Alt, Guido (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Zhou Puzzle: A Peek Into Quantification in Mohist Logic / Liu, Fenrong (CC BY)
  • Self-Driving Cars, Trolley Problems, and the Value of Human Life: An Argument Against Abstracting Human Characteristics / Milford, Stephen R. (CC BY)
  • Sensual Environmental Robots: Entanglements of Speculative Realist Ideas with Design Theory and Practice / Santer, Steven C. (CC BY)
  • Existence and Nonexistence in the History of Logic: Afterword / Ciola, Graziana (CC BY)
  • Being Is a Being / Czerkawski, Maciej (CC BY)
  • On What Makes Some Video Games Philosophical / Mattis, Benny (CC BY)
  • Bridging the Emotional Gap: Philosophical Insights into Sensual Robots with Large Language Model Technology / Vacura, Miroslav (CC BY)
  • A Visual Solution to the Raven Paradox: A Short Note on Intuition, Inductive Logic, and Confirmative Evidence / York, Richard (CC BY)
  • From Necropower to Earthly Care: Rethinking Environmental Crisis through Achille Mbembe / Mpassi, Alphée C. S. (CC BY)
  • Thinking Games: Philosophical Explorations in the Digital Age / Perperidis, Giannis (CC BY)
  • Expression and Expressiveness according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty / Golebiewska, Maria (CC BY)
  • Editorial / Harillo Pla, Adrià (CC BY)
  • Rethinking Gamification within a Genealogy of Governmental Discourses / Nony, Justin (CC BY)
  • Demons as Decolonial Hyperobjects: Uneven Histories of Hauntology / Rahmat, Ahmad Fuad (CC BY)
  • Arche and Nous in Heidegger’s and Aristotle’s Understanding of Phronesis / Larrauri Pertierra, Iñaki Xavier (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ WE-turn and the Ecology of Agency: Biosemiotic and Affordance-Theoretical Reflections / Hale Hendlin, Yogi (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ “WE-turn” in Jazz and Cognition: From What It Is, to How It Happens / Rosenberg, Martin E. (CC BY)
  • Cycling Conditions – Conditionalism About the Mind and Deguchi’s We-Turn / Gabriel, Markus (CC BY)
  • A Question that Says What it Does: On the Aperture of Materialism with Brassier and Bataille / Vivaldi, Jordi (CC BY)
  • Incapability or Contradiction? Deguchi’s Self-as-We in Light of Nishida’s Absolutely Contradictory Self-Identity / Sawada, Jun (CC BY)
  • Topology of the We: Ur-Ich, Pre-Subjectivity, and Knot Structures / Kim, Hye Young (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Logic of Non-Oppositional Selfhood: How to Remain Free from Dichotomies While Still Using Them / Taguchi, Shigeru (CC BY)
  • Introductory Remarks / Raud, Rein (CC BY)
  • Realism Means Formalism: Latour, Bryant, and the Critique of Materialism / Harman, Graham (CC BY)
  • Meaning as Interbeing: A Treatment of the WE-turn and Meta-Science / Zwitter, Andrej (CC BY)
  • Yasuo Deguchi’s “WE-turn”: A Social Ontology for the Post-Anthropocentric World / Raud, Rein (CC BY)
  • Listening to the Daoing in the Morning / Nakajima, Takahiro (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ WE-turn of Action: Principles / Deguchi, Yasuo (CC BY)
  • “It Would be Helpful to Know Which Textbook Teaches the ‘Dialectic’ he Advocates.” Inserting Lukács into the Neurath–Horkheimer Debate / Tripodi, Paolo (CC BY)
  • Critique of Reification of Art and Creativity in the Digital Age: A Lukácsian Approach to AI and NFT Art / Poposki, Zoran (CC BY)
  • Nancy in Jerusalem: Soundscapes of a City / Belford, Liora (CC BY)
  • Non-Existence: The Nuclear Option / Priest, Graham (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Basic Dualism in the World: Object-Oriented Ontology and Systems Theory / Zwick, Martin (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Auditory Dimension of the Technologically Mediated Self / Gutierrez, Ivan (CC BY)
  • Raging Ennui: On Boredom, History, and the Collapse of Liberal Time / Dikovich, Albert (CC BY)
  • Hypnosis, Aesthetics, and Sociality: On How Images Can Create Experiences / Arlandis Castro, Jaime (CC BY)
  • Boethius of Dacia and Terence Parsons: Verbs and Verb Tense Then and Now / Sirridge, Mary (CC BY)
  • Relational or Object-Oriented? A Dialogue between Two Contemporary Ontologies / Sandru, Adrian Razvan (CC BY)
  • Happiness and Joy in Aristotle and Bergson as Life of Thoughtful and Creative Action / Marren, Marina (CC BY)
  • Albert Camus and Rachel Bespaloff: Happiness in a Challenging World / Lombard, Cécilia Andrée Monique (CC BY)
  • Cultivating Trees: Lewis Carroll’s Method of Solving (and Creating) Multi-literal Branching Sorites Problems / Beisecker, Dave (CC BY)
  • Material–Art–Dust. Reflections on Dust Research between Art and Theory / Rauh, Andreas (CC BY)
  • Hegel’s Theory of Time / Gentry, Gerad (CC BY)
  • Meillassoux and Heidegger – How to Deal with Things-in-Themselves? / Leidlmair, Karl (CC BY)
  • Individuals, Existence, and Existential Commitment in Visual Reasoning / Lemanski, Jens (CC BY)
  • Revisiting the Notion of Vicarious Cause: Allure, Metaphor, and Realism in Object-Oriented Ontology / Cogburn, Jon (CC BY)
  • Editorial for Topical Issue “Happiness in Contemporary Continental Philosophy” / de Boer, Ype (CC BY)
  • Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Laruelle on Faith and Immanence / Kruger, Matthew C. (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Marxist Method as the Foundation of Social Criticism – Lukács’ Perspective / Souza, Mateus Soares de (CC BY)
  • Knowing Holbein’s Objects: An Object-Oriented-Ontology Analysis of The Ambassadors / Poposki, Zoran (CC BY)
  • Sonic Epistemologies: Confrontations with the Invisible / Voegelin, Salomé (CC BY)
  • Everyday Hegemony: Reification, the Supermarket, and the Nuclear Family / Bishop, Isabelle (CC BY)
  • Rethinking Organismic Unity: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Human Microbiome / Young, Niki (CC BY)
  • Symptomatic Comedy. On Alenka Zupančič’s The Odd One In and Happiness / Huzarski, Maciej (CC BY)
  • Beyond the Dichotomy of Literal and Metaphorical Language in the Context of Contemporary Physics / Bradonjić, Kaća (CC BY)
  • More Than One Encounter: Exploring the Second-Person Perspective and the In-Between / Hansen, Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel (CC BY)
  • A Strategy for Happiness, in the Wake of Spinoza / Lavaert, Sonja (CC BY)
  • Happiness and the Biopolitics of Knowledge: From the Contemplative Lifestyle to the Economy of Well-Being and Back Again / Cimino, Antonio (CC BY)
  • Enriching Flaws of Scent عطر עטרה A Guava Scent Collection / Hoffman, Thalia Katrin (CC BY)
  • German Idealism, Marxism, and Lukács’ Concept of Dialectical Ontology / Thompson, Michael J. (CC BY)
  • Abelard’s Ontology of Forms: Some New Evidence from the Nominales and the Albricani / Hansen, Heine (CC BY)
  • Self-abnegation, Decentering of Objective Relations, and Intuition of Nature: Toomas Altnurme’s and Cao Jun’s Art / Marren, Marina (CC BY)
  • ˜Dasœ Unabgeschlossene (das Glück). Walter Benjamin’s “Idea of Happiness” / Liska, Vivian (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Temporal Difference and Timelessness in Kant and Heidegger / Ellis, Addison (CC BY)
  • Modality and Actuality: Lukács’s Criticism of Hegel in History and Class Consciousness / Rametta, Gaetano (CC BY)
  • On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life / Faustino, Marta (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Hegelian Master–Slave Dialectic in History and Class Consciousness / Potamias, Spyros (CC BY)
  • Badiou and Agamben Beyond the Happiness Industry and its Critics / de Boer, Ype (CC BY)
  • Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity / Fahmy-Hooke, Joshua (CC BY)
  • Ambient Temporalities: Rethinking Object-Oriented Time through Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger / Stephenson, Jamie (CC BY)
  • Transcendental Apperception from a Phenomenological Perspective: Kant and Husserl on Ego’s Emptiness / Forgione, Luca (CC BY)
  • Introduction to the Special Issue “Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy” / Dannemann, Rüdiger (CC BY)
  • Calling and Responding: An Ethical-Existential Framework for Conceptualising Interactions “in-between” Self and Other / Jons, Lotta (CC BY)
  • “We Understand Him Even Better Than He Understood Himself”: Kant and Plato on Sensibility, God, and the Good / Marren, Marina (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Analog Ends of Science: Investigating the Analogy of the Laws of Nature Through Object-Oriented Ontology and Ontogenetic Naturalism / Tewers, Micah (CC BY)
  • Thinking the Pure and Empty Form of Dead Time. Individuation and Creation of Thinking in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time / Eftestøl, Torbjørn (CC BY)
  • Arvydas Šliogeris’ Perspective on Place: Shaping the Cosmopolis for a Sustainable Presence / Daknys, Mantas (CC BY)
  • Thinking from the Home: Emanuele Coccia on Domesticity and Happiness / Edwards, Evan (CC BY)
  • “Objective Possibility” in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness / Miller, Tyrus (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Poetics of Listening / Mendes-Flohr, Paul (CC BY)
  • Retroactivity in Science: Latour, Žižek, Kuhn / Harman, Graham (CC BY)
  • From the Visual to the Auditory in Heidegger’s Being and Time and Augustine’s Confessions / Fuyarchuk, Andrew (CC BY)
  • Zaniness, Idleness and the Fall of Late Neoliberalism’s Art / Ronel, Yoav (CC BY)
  • ˜Theœ Possibility of Object-Oriented Film Philosophy / Bolšakovas, Edgaras (CC BY)
  • Reanimating Public Happiness: Reading Cavarero and Butler beyond Arendt / Borg, Kurt (CC BY)

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