Making Sense of Research in a Time of Crisis
Kant's Account of the Regulative Use of Transcendental Ideas as a Way to Interpret Sustainability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15160/2282-5460/2984Parole chiave:
Socio-ecological Relationship , Sustainability, Transformative Knowledge, Appendix to the Trascendental Dialectic , Regulative Use of IdeasAbstract
Although ecosystems and society are closely interlinked, a dichotomous conceptualisation of the relationship between them characterizes the Global North, and it determines the current socio-ecological crisis. Philosophy offers useful tools to face this condition and to understand the role of scientific knowledge in finding possible solutions, even if the efforts made do not generate detectable short-term spin-offs. The paper pursues this aim by taking into account the regulative use of transcendental ideas Kant provides in the Critique of Pure Reason and in particular in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. In this regard, the contribution interprets sustainability as an idea that must be used regulatively. Accordingly, it is conceived not as the concept of an object that is actually given in experience but, on the contrary, as a concept we must presuppose at the beginning of our inquiry and of which we must admit the possibility in order to profitably carry out our empirical researches. In other words, our strive to reach a sustainable relationship between society and ecosystems can only make sense if we presuppose that this relationship is possible in the first place, and therefore only if we assume its concept as a heuristic tool aimed at guiding our empirical researches, i.e. if we use this idea regulatively in Kant’s sense. The analysis adopts an interdisciplinary approach, thus aiming to constitute a bridge between philosophy and human geography.
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