Structures and system in Kant’s idealism

Abstract

During the period of the « structuralism », many authors defended the idea of an opposition between this form of philosophy and any form of idealism, specially of subjective idealism, as it is illustrated throughout the german idealism. The purpose of this paper is to defend the opposite thesis of a strong internal link between kantian criticism and structural methods in history of philosophy.

This link is particularly clear in Gueroult’s « structuralist » method and in the theory of the « Dianoematic ». There is a connaturality between the kantian themes of the system and the transcendantal method and the main claims of gueroultian methodology.

This link is illustrated by the great interpret of kantian philosophy, L.Guillermit. His method of « critical elucidation » is applied to the interpretation of the systematicity of the whole critical period of Kant and specially of the progressive constitution of the transcendantal Aesthetic throughout the three Critics, which he describes as a sort of life of the kantian structures.

This elucidation of the genesis of the structures remains nevertheless internal to the kantian system. It leaves open the question of the nature of its link to the post kantian systems, but this form of neutrality is more apparent than real and consonant with a choice of Kant’s idealism against Hegel’one.