CFP: The Kantian Copernican Revolution: Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Kant’s Argumentative Strategy

CFP, Topical issue of Cogency on “The Kantian Copernican Revolution: Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Kant’s Argumentative Strategy”

Guest edited by Samuel Descarreaux, University of Ottawa (Canada) and Université de Lorraine (France)

Submission deadline: July 15th, 2024

Expected Publication: December 2024

Theme and scope: The international journal Cogency dedicates its 16th volume to the uses, misuses, and reappropriations of Kant’s metaphor of the “Copernican revolution” in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. This metaphor understood as an argumentative strategy, advocates explicitly for the conformity of the object of knowledge to the spatiotemporal forms and logical categories of the subject (Bxvi). It introduces a non-Platonic conception of a priori principles that impose a universal legality to phenomena and a logical structure to the ensuing judicative knowledge. However, in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, the “Copernican revolution” became a much broader rallying cry to justify (i.) a critical revolution in the epistemic point of view, (ii.) a systemic reconfiguration of knowledge (theoretical, practical, aesthetical, etc.) from a limited human standpoint or (iii.) a methodological tool for deconstructing metaphysical and epistemological induced problems. Some historical examples include:

-            The scientific examination of perceptual and cognitive abilities shared by early neo-Kantian naturalists and American pragmatists. Their empirical concessions made to psychophysiological sciences go hand in hand with the hypostatization of the regulated conditions for the scientific practice (or inquiry), that is the development of investigative methods and the practical enrichment of experimental objects; the openness of the scientific procedure is thus steered by guiding principles for successful inquiry.

-            The identification of historically verifiable cultural facts of science and its conditions of objective validity that make up the Marburg neo-Kantians “transcendental method”. This methodical accomplishment of the “Copernican Revolution” allows for a progressive analysis of ideal structures that gives unity and relative meaning to things as such according to formal functions or laws. The understanding of this never-exhausted content of possible experience is considered an ideal unity of knowledge that imposes an infinite and asymptotical task on the generations of scientific researchers.

-            The relativization of the Kantian apriorism by the Viennese logical positivists under the influence of the Einsteinian Revolution in mathematics and physics. The trivially necessary truths by definition that feature in logico-linguistic a priori frameworks acquire meaning through their empirical verification by experience. The meaningless metaphysical pseudo-questions receive a pragmatic answer (based on f. ex. predictive efficiency, simplicity, communicability) which promotes a therapeutic solution to issues implying to choose for instance between different realist and antirealism conceptual frameworks.

For each of those (more or less homogenous) schools of thought, their explicit reference to the “Kantian Copernican Revolution” repeatedly serves to legitimize different (even incommensurable) rearrangements of the subject's relationship with the world, of the form taken by the object to be known, and of the epistemic limits that apply to subjectivity. For its 16th volume, Cogency questions the definition and the implications of this argumentative strategy.

Submission guidelines: The manuscript (written either in English, Spanish, or Portuguese) should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words (including tables, references, figure captions, and endnotes). Topics may include:

-          Contextual or doctrinal inquiry into Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” argument.

-          Litteral and Liberal uses, misuses, and abuses of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. This may include (but is not limited to):

o   The rebirth of Aristotelian psychology (Brentano, Trendelenburg…)

o   Orthodox and unorthodox neo-Kantian (Cohen, Cassirer, Rickert, Helmholtz, Riehl…)

o   Early phenomenologists (Twardowski, Husserl…)

o   The Cambridge analysists (Russell, Moore…)

o   The Logical positivists (Reichenbach, Carnap…)

o   The American pragmatists (Dewey, Lewis…)

-          The theoretical, practical, aesthetical, political, or theological implications unfolding from the Kantian “Copernican Revolution”.

Please submit your manuscript before July 15th, 2024 via our submission page here. More information on the submission guidelines is also available on the same page. When submitting your manuscript, please include two documents:

1.     The complete text of your manuscript without any identifying information,

2.     A title page with the title of the manuscript, the author’s name(s), the author's full address (including the email address), and any acknowledgment and/or conflict of interest.

About Cogency: This international journal, edited by the Institute of Philosophy of the Universidad Diego Portales, is dedicated to the study of philosophical problems related to conceptions of rationality, its varieties, applications, and uses. This indexed journal uses a double-blind peer-review system and advocates for an open-access policy that does not charge extra fees for article processing. For more information, please visit our website https://cogency.udp.cl/index.php/cogency/about/submissions

Should you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact our guest editor at [email protected] or us at [email protected].