ALFREDO FERRARIN: THE POWERS OF PURE REASON. KANT AND THE IDEA OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2015, 352 PP.

Abstract

“Like rainbows over an abyss”2. By quoting Nietzsche’s fragments, Alfredo Ferrarin recalls, in the last chapter of his book, the role of the power of judgment in ensuring the transition from the domain of nature to that of morals (273). The Powers of Pure Reason. Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy is a rich, complex and very articulated book, somehow revolutionary in Kant studies thanks to its seemingly simple claim: Kant’s philosophy has to be considered as “the promotion of reason’s ends”, rather than as “logical self-consistency” or “the instrument of mankind’s progress” (292). In other words, Alfredo Ferrarin advocates a reading of Kant’s entire system in the light of a unitary notion of reason, to be further declined according to its different aims. Based on this interpretation, Kant’s inconsistencies and even contradictions are neither nullified nor blamed, but they are interpreted as necessary parts of a complex and dynamical whole amounting to the power of reason. Consequently, all those philosophical issues threatening the unity of reason are turned by this book into a tribute to Kant’s depth of reasoning (2).