Demarcation of the Knowable and Unknowable: 200 Years of Metaphysics from Suárez’ Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597) to Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

The workshop seeks to address themes revolving around human intelligibility and its limits in early modern metaphysics. The two hundred years between Suárez' Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597) and Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (1797) were marked by major attempts to place metaphysical knowledge on secure epistemic foundations. At the same time, the history of early modern metaphysics is riddled with postulations about objects, properties, and reasons that are or might be ultimately unknowable. These postulations encouraged skepticism surrounding the very possibility of metaphysics and led some to claim that the entire enterprise of metaphysics is guided not by truth and knowledge but by vain speculation. This "battlefield" was fundamental to Kant's attempt to find a new strictly scientific path for metaphysics. The historical debate draws on the following questions:

• What is it that secures and establishes intelligibility for us?

• Why can we pose questions that we do not seem to be able to answer?

• What leads us to want to know something as an object, property, or idea if we cannot know it - or do some of these things turn out to be knowable after all?

• Does our intelligence allow us to recognize or know a higher or absolute intelligence, or does the existence of this intelligence belong to faith alone?

The workshop will explore these questions and assertions on the premises, content, and limits of the knowable and unknowable in early modern metaphysics.