Философия Канта и «лингвистическое кантианство»

Кантовский сборник. 2018. Т. 37. № 2. С. 32–45.

Smirnov M.

The expression “linguistic Kantianism” is widely used to
refer to ideas about thought and cognition being determined by
language — a conception characteristic of 20th century analytic
philosophy. In this article, I conduct a comparative analysis
of Kant’s philosophy and views falling under the umbrella expression
“linguistic Kantianism.” First, I show that “linguistic
Kantianism” usually presupposes a relativistic conception that is
alien to Kant’s philosophy (although Kant’s philosophy itself may
be perceived as relativistic from a certain point of view). Second, I
analyse Kant’s treatment of linguistic determinism and the place
of his ideas in the 18th century intellectual milieu and provide an
overview of relevant contemporary literature. Third, I show that
authentic Kantianism and “linguistic Kantianism” belong to two
different types of transcendentalism, to which I respectively refer
as the “transcendentalism of the subject” and the “transcendentalism
of the medium.” The transcendentalism of the subject
assigns a central role to the faculties of the cognising subject (according
to Kant, cognition is not the conforming of a subject’s intuitions
and understanding to objects, but rather the application
of a subject’s cognitive faculties to them). The transcendentalism
of the medium assigns the role of an “active” element neither to
the external world nor to the faculties of the cognising subject,
but to something in between — language, in the case of “linguistic
Kantianism.” I conclude that the expression “linguistic
Kantianism” can be misleading when it comes to the origins of
this theory. It would be more appropriate to refer to this theory by
the expression “linguistic transcendentalism,” thus avoiding an
incorrect reference to Kant.

Keywords: философия языка, philosophy of language, трансцендентализм, transcendentalism, лингвистическое кантианство, гипотеза лингвистической относительности, linguistic Kantianism, hypothesis of linguistic relativity

Publication based on the results of: Динамические модели в аналитической метафизике и философии языка (2017)