Alle origini dell’archeologia filosofica

Christoph August Heumann e Thomas Burnet come fonti di Kant

Abstract

The expression “philosophical archaeology”, which appears in the Lose Blätter zu den Fortschritten der Metaphysik, is a hapax within Kant’s corpus. While it undoubtedly shares certain features with the “archaeology of nature” that Kant develops in the context of natural inquiry, the origin of the expression remains unclear. Kant identifies philosophical archaeology with the “philosophical history of philosophy”, an expression he borrows from the systematic introduction to the Acta philosophorum by Christoph August Heumann, whose overall historical-philosophical perspective Kant also shares. In Heumann’s work, within a chapter on the origin of philosophy, there appears a reference to Thomas Burnet’s Archaeologiae philosophicae; an author whom Kant, moreover, cites repeatedly elsewhere. This paper aims to argue that Burnet is likely to be the actual source of Kant’s concept of philosophical archaeology. Beyond Heumann’s citation, there are many affinities between the two ‘archaeologies’: the investigation into the origins and the progress of philosophy, the emphasis on the ruins of the past and finally the practical orientation that characterizes the emergence of philosophy. This latter aspect may reinforce an interpretation of Kantian philosophical archaeology and the Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik that emphasises the notions of need of reason and practical-dogmatic metaphysics.

Englis Title: The Origins of Philosophical Archaeology: Christoph August Heumann and Thomas Burnet as Kant’s Sources