Kant’s Two-World System and Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Participation: Clarifying the ambiguity between logic and physics in transcendental philosophy

Abstract:

As academic debate over Kant’s transcendental philosophy continues, important ambiguities remain to be addressed. His Critique of Pure Reason is focused on presenting only the formal conditions for the possibility of knowledge in experience, and yet in the Third Analogy of Experience he inserts a material condition. The drafts of the Opus postumum reveal a Kant struggling to reconcile his physics with his transcendental philosophy, with positions that go directly against the first Critique. These ambiguities are inherent to Kant’s view of reality, while Fabro’s presentation of Aquinas’s philosophy of participation allows for a clearer explanation of our knowledge.

Key words:

Immanuel Kant, Thomas Aquinas, cogitative, participation