Metaphors of spatial location
understanding post-kantian space
pp. 169-196
in: Roxana Baiasu, Graham Bird, A. W. Moore (eds), Contemporary Kantian metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
This chapter argues that the nature and function of spatial location and corresponding metaphors in Kant's first Critique have crucial implications for post- Kantian debates about the space of the knowable, the space of the unknowable and the boundary between them. Of course, on Kant's account, one of the boundaries between the knowable and the unknowable is precisely space as a condition of possibility of cognition belonging to sensibility. The chapter addresses questions about space considered both as an a priori form of sensible intuition and as a metaphor for what, in Kant, is non- sensible, but thinkable, in particular, the ideas of freedom, immortality and God. Thinking these ideas of reason, as regulative ideals, involves acts of the imagination and provides an alternative to the two- worlds reading of Kant.
