Research Group on Kant-València

Description

The research group "Kant-València" is made up of researchers from the Philosophy department of the University of Valencia and other European Universities. Its members are specialists in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy. They are interested in different aspects of philosophy - theory of knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, theory of science - as well as in other disciplines, such as quantum physics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

They have growing synergies with researchers from Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and other countries of the European Union and America. The germ of the group can be found in the permanent seminar "Kant and current problems of philosophy", whose trajectory began on April 8, 2013 at the Complutense University of Madrid. Within the seminar, seven Kantian Studies workshops took place between 2013 and 2018 and two collective volumes were published: Kant and the Sciences (Biblioteca Nueva / Universidad Complutense, Madrid 2011) and Contemporary Perspectives on Kantian Philosophy (in Proceedings of the 1st REF Congress, University of Valencia 2015). As a result of the creation of the Revista de Estudios Kantianos, international journal of the SEKLE, Society for Kantian Studies in the Spanish Language (University of Valencia, 2016), and of the celebration of the 4th International Congress of the SEKLE in October 2018, the optimal circumstances arose to bring the various synergies together. Pedro Jesús Teruel - coordinator of the seminar, editor of the collective volumes, founding director of the REK and organizer of the congress - took then the steps to collect this trajectory in an institutional research cell.

The so constituted research group is incardinated at the University of Valencia in 2020. It seeks to approach the current problems of philosophy in the light of Kant's thought, from both theoretical and practical perspective. Dialogue with sciences occupies a special place in it. It connects with the Kantian heritage in three ways: on the one hand, thanks to its role in the genesis and development of Kantian philosophy; secondly, because of its influence on the reflection about transcendental subjectivity, with the debate on freedom occupying a special place in it; finally, for his contribution when it comes to unravel the question about the human being, by Kant conceived as nuclear. Special attention is paid to the natural sciences and to physics, biology, and neuroscience, considering their ethical, social, and political projections

Goals CT

The research group address the theoretical and practical questions posed by Kantian thought in its connection with the current problems of philosophy..

Research lines

Globalization and cosmopolitanism
Approaching the problems of cosmopolitan society and the European political and cultural project, with an emphasis on the phenomena of globalization, fundamentalism, post-truth, and models of political and economic renewal.
Philosophical Historiography
Historiographic analysis of the genesis and development of the Kantian system.
Textual hermeneutics
Interpretation of primary sources, with particular attention to unpublished texts in Spanish and Valencian / Catalan.
Evolutionary epistemology
Investigating the possibilities of transformation of epistemology in a naturalistic sense.
History of the reception
Cartography of the reception of the Kantian work during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Theory of knowledge
Addressing the meaning, scope, and limits of transcendental idealism.
Kant and the sciences
Unravelling the connections of Kantian thought with current scientific research, with a particular interest in quantum physics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
Foundations of ethics
Analysing the current validity and the problems of the Kantian foundation of ethics.
Current challenges of ethics
Studying the ethical projections of Kantian thought within the framework of the relationship with non-human animals, environmental issues, the digital revolution, and pacifism.