Cogito
Eurozine
Cogito
2005-03-17
Summary for Cogito Nr. 41-42
Within the scope of activities being held worldwide for the 200th anniversary of Immanuel Kant's death, we arranged two international symposiums in cooperation with the University of Mugla and the Goethe Institute in October 2004. The participants of the symposiums were all noteworthy personalities, but I mention only the honourary guests to give a rough idea: Karl-Otto Apel, Manfred Baum, and Paul Guyer. Both symposiums drew a high level of interest, and we believe them to have contributed significantly to Kantian literature internationally. We entertained our honourary guests in Istanbul and had a round table discussion, a compilation of which can be found in the Appendix in this issue of Cogito; then our team, consisting of Bedia Akarsu, Ioanna Kuçuradi, Claudia Bickmann, Dogan Özlem, Hazal Gündüz, and I, took these three important personalities on a long trip by land, which ended in Mugla. I believe these two weeks together to have been an important experience for all of us.
The distinguishing feature of this issue is the articles by Apel, Baum, and Guyer. The special Kant issue begins with an article of mine, in which I aim to represent Kant's life story. After that, you will find Baum's text on the Critique of Pure Reason, which he presented in Istanbul in its German original. Next is a compilation from Adorno's book on Kant, a contemporary reading of the Critique of Pure Reason. David Grünberg, Nebil Reyhani, and Ilhan Inan's articles follow and deal with the key features of the Critique of Pure Reason and their elaboration after Kant. Umberto Eco looks into the Critique of Pure Reason from his unique perspective and paves the way for a reading of contemporary Kantian transformation by Apel. Eva Schaper's article deals with the aesthetic dimension of the Critique of Pure Reason. Zizek presents an example of a psychoanalytical reading of Kant, and Birgit Recki's enlightenment article includes a critique of that reading. Betül Çotuksöken investigates whether Kantian thought is beyond history. In my interview with Ionna Kuçuradi, the sine qua non name of an issue on Kant, she dwells upon a distinction especially emphasized by herself, the distinction between ethics and morals.
Rawls, whose writings have not yet been published in Turkish, helps us bridge an important gap with his article on morals; the article embraces important aspects of Rawls's lines of thought. Guyer continues the theme of ethics where Rawls leaves off with his article, the original English version of which can also be found in the journal. The article we compiled from Arendt's Kant lectures sheds light on a different dimension of the Critique of Pure Reason, that of political philosophy. Whereas Habermas argues what Kantian eternal peace can mean today, Kaan H. Ökten focuses on a deficiency in the Turkish translation of Perpetual Peace and provides us with a different perspective. Apel's article, laden with the labour of years of thinking, is hard to digest, but it gives a courageous account of how Kant can be carried into the present; the original version of the article is also included in the issue.
Finally, in the round-table compilation, you can read how our guests discussed the opinions they represented in the symposium with each other.
Summary by E. Efe Çakmak