Fiquei um tempo sem postar devido às festas de fim de ano, e também porque aproveitei para dar uma pausa nos estudos sobre Wittgenstein para retomar um projeto que há tempos estava parado, a revisão e versão para o inglês do capítulo 4 de minha
dissertação, que pretendo um dia submeter a publicação. O título em inglês ficou: ''From the letter to Herz to the Critique of Pure Reason: The development of Kant's `critical problem' ''. Segue a versão (ainda provisória --- aceito sugestões de correção) dos parágrafos introdutórios, exceto notas:
It is widely spread among Kant's commentators the opinion that his letter to Marcus Herz, dated from 21 of February of 1772 (hereafter simply ``the letter''), supplies important elements to understand the origin and development of the so called ``critical problem''. Not so consensual, however, is the understanding of the nature of this problem, specially when the focus is on the relation between its first occurrence, and its reappearance, nine years later, in the Critique of the Pure Reason. This is not a simple issue at all, because neither the letter nor the Critique itself presents a position free of exegetical difficulties. However, the mere attempt to address it goes already some of the way in clearing the theoretical options underlying the dispute concerning the nature of the ``critical problem'', what, in its turn, will be important to understand the nature of the critical project. With this objective in mind, I shall confront those two contexts of occurrence of the problem at stake, aiming to point out some of the main differences between them. The rationale of this attempt is the possibility of making intelligible some aspects of Kant's mature position which could hardly be made compatible with theses presented in the letter, and that are intimately connected with the arising of a new understanding on the nature and limits of human cognition, expressed in his proposal of a ``Copernican revolution''.
I will proceed as follows: first, I will present the ``critical problem'' as it is found in the letter to Herz, indicating two general theses which seem to be responsible for the restriction of this problem only to the scope of the intellectual representations in 1772 (section 1). Later, I will present some important differences and asymmetries in the formulation of this problem in the Critique, which indicate that both the theses previously pointed out are challenged by Kant in this new context, what by itself already suggests that a fundamental change in the understanding of the ``critical problem'' must be occurred from 1772 to 1781 (section 2). After that I will explore the connections between this change and the refinement of some distinctions that, thus I will argue, become to have an important role in the ``Copernican'' understanding of the relation between representation and object, and, therefore, in the very understanding of the notion of ``object'' (section 3). Given these results, I will present some considerations of a more general scope, aiming to link this change with the adoption of a new model for the explanation of the human cognition, resultant of the Copernican revolution (section 4). I will then present a final balance (section 5).
