Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.52685/pihfb.48.1(95).6
Miroslav Krleža’s Interdisciplinary View of Immanuel Kant
Davor Balić
; Odsjek za filozofiju, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Osijek, Hrvatska
Demian Papo
orcid.org/0000-0001-5574-6705
; Odsjek za filozofiju, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Osijek, Hrvatska
Abstract
The reflections and attitudes of the Croatian polymath Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) on the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and his teaching have not received adequate attention thus far. However, this does not mean that Krleža was not acquainted with the content and pecularities of Kant’s teaching. Moreover, Krleža’s opus contains numerous judgments of Kant and his teaching, noting that Krleža also wrote two texts entirely dedicated to Kant: the article “On the Occasion of the Bicentenary of Immanuel Kant’s Birth,” published in 1924, and an unpublished text entitled Kant, which is an integral part of Krleža’s manuscript legacy and which most probably originated during 1939. Krleža’s assessments of Kant can be viewed from different perspectives. The approach to reflections on topics and thinkers with which Krleža was preoccupied often went beyond disciplinary frameworks, which is why his opus is largely marked by interdisciplinarity. As expected, Krleža wrote about Kant and his teaching from a philosophical perspective, particularly from the perspectives of history of philosophy, logic, theory of knowledge and ethics. Moreover, he also viewed Kant and his teaching from the perspectives of literary stylistics, history, political science, anthropology, pedagogy and medicine. Thereby he expressed his knowledge of the content of numerous Kant’s texts, especially the content of the work Critique of Pure Reason and the work Toward Perpetual Peace, but also the content of the article “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” as well as the article “Conjectural Beginning of Human History.” When reflecting on Kant’s philosophical thought, Krleža was most often focused on Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ in the way of comprehending material things. From the perspective of literary stylistics, Kant was initially judged as a thinker whose writing was dilettante, but was ultimately judged as a thinker who wrote according to the style of his time: winged and ideationally sublime. When he viewed Kant from the perspective of history, Krleža understood him as a thinker who marked the 18th century, while from the perspective of political science he defined him as a supporter of the Jacobins. When presenting his anthropological and pedagogical views, Krleža was very pessimistic about the future of man, since he was convinced that man would not base his upbringing and actions upon Kant’s ideas, including those recorded in his work Toward Perpetual Peace. Finally, when he considered Kant and his teaching from the perspective of medicine, he concluded that Kant’s knowledge of mental illness was closer to Scholasticism than to the Renaissance.
Keywords
Miroslav Krleža; Immanuel Kant; philosophy; literary stylistics; history; political science; anthropolog; pedagogy; medicine
Hrčak ID:
284057
URI
Publication date:
12.7.2022.
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