Karampatsou, Marialena
Junior Fellow: April–September 2020 –– DEFERRED UNTIL WINTER 2020/21
Research Project: Scepticism and Kantianism: Salomon Maimon’s Reading of Kant
This project will analyse and critically assess Salomon Maimon’s engagement with Immanuel Kant: Maimon endorses scepticism and argues that Kantianism cannot escape scepticism either. Building on existing research on Maimon’s philosophy that mostly takes a Maimon-immanent perspective, it adopts a distinctive approach by placing special emphasis on the context in which Maimon articulates his scepticism: reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In its approach to Maimon, it takes seriously both the relationship that his work has to that of other early readers of Kant (most notably the sceptic Gottlob Ernst Schulze) and his work’s connection to questions figuring prominently in contemporary Kant scholarship. It will consist of two subprojects focusing on (i) Maimon’s treatment of the Kantian thing in itself and (ii) Maimon’s criticism of Kant’s refutation of Hume. This distinctive Kant-oriented approach seeks to argue against some influential accounts of both (i) and (ii) and to develop a more realist interpretation of Maimon’s views, adding to our understanding of his thinking, its place in the history of philosophy, and its importance for contemporary Kantianism.
Marialena Karampatsou will be a postdoctoral fellow in 2020. She is currently completing her PhD at the Department of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.