Leuven Kant Conference 2022
\nDebates on Kant&rsquo\;s philosophy that took place during his lifetime largely played out between (a) Kant&rsquo\;s followers\, (b) critics aligned with Lockean empiricism\, Humean skepticism\, or Leibnizian rationalism\, and (c) early post-Kantians who attempted to overcome the perceived limits of Kant&rsquo\;s achievements. Drawing on a distinction made by Kant himself\, Reinhold in The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (1791) framed the reception of Kant&rsquo\;s philosophy by distinguishing between those who dogmatically accepted its &lsquo\;letter&rsquo\; and independent minds\, like himself\, who sought to grasp its &lsquo\;spirit&rsquo\;. However\, this influential distinction obscures the enormous variety of the positions that were adopted at the time as well as their complex interrelations. Self-proclaimed Kantians also moved beyond the letter of Kant&rsquo\;s text\; Kant was attacked from many different directions\; and those who appealed to the &lsquo\;spirit&rsquo\; of Kant&rsquo\;s philosophy often defended widely diverging positions. Moreover\, early post-Kantians may well have been indebted to Kant&rsquo\;s predecessors\, defenders\, and critics to a larger extent than is commonly acknowledged. Finally\, various philosophers who took Kant&rsquo\;s insights in new directions during his lifetime do not fit Reinhold&rsquo\;s distinction and are today mostly forgotten by anyone but a few specialists.
\nThe conference aims to foreground aspects of Kant&rsquo\;s early reception that tend to be overlooked by scholarship on either Kant or German idealism and\, thus\, to shed light on the full spectrum of responses to Kant&rsquo\;s critical philosophy from 1781 until his death in 1804.
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We intend the conference to provide a space for open exchange between established scholars\, early career researchers\, and PhD students. Unlike most preceding editions\, the 2022 edition of the conference is devoted to a particular topic and will not distinguish between keynote speakers and participants selected on the basis of their abstracts.
The conference will feature a combination of on-campus and online talks. The on-campus talks will be livestreamed. The online talks will be fully online\, i.e.\, all participants will join a Zoom meeting regardless of their location. All talks will take place between 1 pm and 7 pm to accommodate different time zones.