Kant dans l'agora d'Athènes. Éléments de la pensée grecque dans la Dissertation de 1770

[Autom. eng. transl.] Our contribution aims to show that in the Dissertatio of 1770 Kant measures himself with the thought of the ancients – especially Greek thought – on questions that will become very important in the tormented gestation of criticism. In § 3 of the Dissertatio, Kant affirms that "in the schools of the ancients" the term phenomenon designates the object of sensibility, while that which contains "nothing except that which must be known by means of intelligence" is defined noumenon (see AA 02: 392). The question of the precision and depth of Kant's knowledge of Greek thought has long been a subject of debate and the discussion concerning the texts that filtered Kant's contact with the Greek world is still open. In the case of Plato, for example, some scholars maintain that Kant's main source would be Johann Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae, which Kant mentions in the KrV in connection with Plato (A 316/B 372), whereas others indicate rather the Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele: in drey Gesprachen by Moses Mendelssohn. Be that as it may, it is important to emphasize that the Dissertatio testifies to an extension of Kant's references to the Greek philosophers, since in the philosopher's previous writings the main references to the ancient world are represented by Seneca and Lucretius (see by Gedanken AA 01:7 and Beweisgrund AA 02:65). Kant's – more or less orthodox and direct – references to Greek classicity in the Dissertatio of 1770 correspond to Kant's identification of questions that are central to the later critical development of his thought, such as, for example, that of the distinction between the phenomenon and the noumenon, to which is also linked the question of the problematic and ambiguous nature of the intellectualia, namely the objects belonging to the mundus intelligibilis. It is no accident, therefore, that the term intellectualia appears with some frequency – both in contemporary Reflexionen of the Dissertatio (e.g. 4446, 4449, 4451, AA 17: 553-556) and in courses in the critical period (e.g. Metaphysik Volckmann, AA 28: 370-371; Metaphysik Dohna, AA 28: 619; Metaphysik L1, AA 28: 175) – in passages where the ancient philosophers are mentioned (Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras).