Karampatsou, Marialena
Junior Fellow: October 2020–March 2021
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. From the perspective of Maimon’s account of different sources of (purported) knowledge, the Kantian system amounts to an ultimately unsatisfactory combination of “empirical dogmatism” and “rational scepticism.” Building on existing research on Maimon––research that has taken a mostly Maimon-immanent perspective so far––this project will take a distinctive, more Kant-oriented, approach: it explores (in detail) the relationship that Maimon’s views bear to those of other early readers of Kant (most notably Gottlob Ernst Schulze) and places a special emphasis on the connections between Maimon’s criticism and questions figuring prominently in current Kant scholarship. The project consists 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. Through this distinctive approach, it seeks to argue against some influential existing accounts of both (i) and (ii) and to develop a more realist interpretation of Maimon’s views, adding to our understanding of Maimon’s thinking, its place in the history of philosophy, and its importance for contemporary Kantianism.
Marialena Karampatsou will be a postdoctoral fellow in 2020–21. She received her PhD from the Department of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.