The quite famous 'lone hand argument', contained in Kant’s pre-critical essay "Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space" (1768), was charged in many ways. After several remarks grounded on the concepts of nowadays geometry, which showed Kant’s mistakes in accounting for incongruent counterparts, a very different criticism was advanced. It maintains that Kant’s argument involves a paralogism, due to a confusion about the terminology of the geometry of his age. The present paper firstly deals with a problem which follows from such a claim, namely that in Kant’s essays there are clues which suggest that he is employing a different terminology voluntarily. Then it proposes an alternative reading of the text, according to which Kant thinks of orientation in strict analogy with magnitude as far as they are considered inner properties of a shape.
Gli opposti incongruenti: un paralogismo kantiano?
MARTINELLO, Francesco
2011-01-01
Abstract
The quite famous 'lone hand argument', contained in Kant’s pre-critical essay "Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space" (1768), was charged in many ways. After several remarks grounded on the concepts of nowadays geometry, which showed Kant’s mistakes in accounting for incongruent counterparts, a very different criticism was advanced. It maintains that Kant’s argument involves a paralogism, due to a confusion about the terminology of the geometry of his age. The present paper firstly deals with a problem which follows from such a claim, namely that in Kant’s essays there are clues which suggest that he is employing a different terminology voluntarily. Then it proposes an alternative reading of the text, according to which Kant thinks of orientation in strict analogy with magnitude as far as they are considered inner properties of a shape.
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