Geistersehen innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft: Kant über die Aufklärung dunkler Vorstellungen

Abstract

The article generally aims to demonstrate that Kant’s endeavor with Swedenborg must be considered productive, meaning that “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” is not merely a slanderous text. Specifically, we will deal with the explanation of “obscure representations”, which, according to Swedenborg, have their basis in the coexistence of the mundus spiritualis (not intelligibilis!) and mundus sensibilis. This theorem proves highly compatible with Kant, leading to an attempt to reconstruct Swedenborg’s considerations ‘within the bounds of bare reason’: Kant’s profane explanation of obscure representations ultimately refers back to semiotics, namely in the sense that the representations are understood as caused by pure rational beings. Obscure representations thus point as signs to a pre-critical ‘realm of ends’. The influence of pure rational beings also manifests itself in a moral-practical sense; it evokes a feeling opposed to egoism, which can easily be traced to the ‘feeling of respect’ or the ‘voice of reason’ from the critical writings. The ‘actual’ spirit-seeing, which Kant explains as a dislocated foco imaginario and thus as a mental defect, is to be distinguished from all of this, as it only describes the special case of the illegitimate externalization of these obscure representations. As will be shown at the end of the article, the theorems taken up in “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” can be traced further to Kant’s very last writings.