Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Rational Revolution and Copernican Revolution

Perhaps encouraging the standard interpretation of 'Kant's Copernican revolution'--which proposes that object : subject = Earth : Sun--is Kant's characterization of Copernicus as theorizing "in a manner contradictory to the senses", in the footnote to B xxii.  For, Kant could be interpreted, with justification, on the one hand, as alluding to, in that passage, Plato's use of the Sun as an image of non-empirical Intellect, while on the other, as, more generally, locating the Intellect within the Subject.  However, such an interpretation founders on the characterization, also in the same footnote, that Copernicus located "observed movements", i. e. the apparent circular motions of celestial bodies, in the Subject.  In other words, while Kant may indeed have effected a Rational revolution, the latter is not to be confused with his Copernican revolution.

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