The history of lexica devoted to the concepts of Kantian philosophy begins a few years after the publication of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in 1781. This is to be expected given that, in that text and throughout the rest of his mature writings, Kant not only introduced new terminology linked to his transcendental philosophy, but also provided the concepts of other philosophical traditions with divergent significations. It is obviously essential for the comprehension of Kantian ideas to gain an understanding of this novel conceptual apparatus; yet, this is no easy task, and the difficulties posed by the emergence of this terminology spurred the publication of Carl Christian Erhard Schmid’s (Reference Schmid1786) Critik der reinen Vernunft im Grundrisse zu Vorlesungen nebst einem Wörterbuch zum leichtern Gebrauch der Kantischen Schriften, an exposition of the Critical philosophy followed by a Kantian dictionary. Schmid’s lexicon has had many successors, with one of the first, and also one of the most important, the Encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der kritischen Philosophie by Georg Samuel Albert Mellin (Reference Mellin1797–1804). Mellin’s dictionary appeared in six volumes – an immense work that is still considered a valuable resource for the study of Kant’s philosophy today. The twentieth century saw the publication of the Kant-Lexicon by Rudolph Eisler (Reference Eisler1930), a remarkable work whose principal novelty (and advantage) lay in the fact that it not only covered Kant’s published work but also the letters and fragments of his Nachlaß. Almost a century later, Marcus Willaschek, Jürgen Stolzenberg, Georg Mohr and Stefano Bacin (Reference Willaschek, Stolzenberg, Mohr and Stefano2015) have edited a new Kant-Lexicon, which compiles a significant number of entries, covering volumes 1–9 and 21–2 of the Akademie-Ausgabe of Kants gesammelte Schriften, by internationally recognized Kant scholars. It is thus the first dictionary based on the Akademie edition of Kant’s texts and which incorporates state-of-the-art research on Kant’s philosophy. Additionally, there are a variety of lexica in other languages: in French, for instance, Le vocabulaire de Kant by Roger Verneaux (Reference Verneaux1967) and Dictionnaire Kant by Jean-Marie Vaysse (Reference Vaysse2007), and in English, A Kant-Dictionary by Howard Caygill (Reference Caygill1995) and The Kant Dictionary by Lucas Thorpe (Reference Thorpe2015). While the Diccionario de la filosofía crítica kantiana would appear to be only the most recent entry in this series of lexica for the Critical philosophy, it is nonetheless and significantly the first one written in the Spanish language.
The Diccionario was executed under the direction of the prominent Argentinian Kantian scholar Mario Caimi, in collaboration with a group of specialists from the University of Buenos Aires. As the authors say in the preface, the lexicon was first conceived as a summary and translation into Spanish of Mellin’s Encyclopädisches Wörterbuch, an original intention still discernible in a number of entries. As the project developed, however, the deficiencies in Mellin’s lexicon necessitated the addition of important terms, such as ‘Afección’ (affection), ‘H istoria’ (history) and ‘M ujer’ (woman), and the main entries were also modified according to criteria established by the authors, thereby completing the evolution of the project from a simple synopsis of Mellin’s dictionary to an independent work.
This Spanish lexicon of Kantian philosophy has approximately 500 pages and more than 800 entries. Each headword is followed by the corresponding terms in German and Latin, and then translations into three other Romance languages: French, Portuguese and Italian. For example, after the headword ‘C onciencia’ we find the terms ‘Bewusstsein, Apperception, conscientia, apperceptio, fr. conscience, port. consciência, it. Coscienza’, followed by an enumeration of diverse definitions and explanations. The references to the sources are provided at the end of the entry, in accordance with the notation established by the editorial board of Kant-Studien and commonly used by Kantian scholars. Terms that have their own entry are highlighted in boldface and the reader is often referred to other headwords associated with the entry. In this way, the dictionary can serve as a helpful guide for continuous exploration of certain topics or themes. Moreover, the entries often go beyond excerpting Kant’s own words. In several cases, they offer explanations of or elaborations on Kantian vocabulary incorporating original research done by the authors. We might consider, for example, the entries corresponding to three seminal notions of Modern philosophy in general, and of Kantian Critical philosophy in particular: ‘R azón (Vernunft, ratio)’, ‘L ibertad (Freiheit, libertas)’ and ‘M etafísica (Metaphysik, metaphysica)’.
The entry ‘R azón (Vernunft, ratio)’ contains a lengthy explanation, extending to almost thirteen pages, of different senses of the term corresponding to its distinct contexts, including logical, gnoseological, transcendental, metaphysical and anthropological. The article defines and explains the notions of reason in a broad sense (i.e. as the ‘superior faculty of thinking in general’), of theoretical reason in its logical use (as the ‘faculty of deducing the particular from the universal and of representing the particular as necessary according to principles’) (p. 400), the illegitimate (constitutive) use of reason in the domain of knowledge, and the apodictic and hypothetical use of reason. It also discusses the concept of reason with regard to metaphysics: reason as the faculty of ideas (the real use of reason) and reason as the faculty of the unconditioned. It then clarifies the notions of practical reason and practical metaphysics, gives an explanation of the primacy of practical reason over the theoretical and, finally, defines reason considered anthropologically. The body of the entry contains references to several related concepts, such as ‘R azón común’ (common reason), ‘R egulativo’ (regulative), ‘S ímbolo’ (symbol) and ‘A nalogía’ (analogy).
Under the headword ‘L ibertad (Freiheit, libertas)’ we find the definition of the term ‘freedom’ as the unconditioned causality of reason, as the supersensible object of the category of causality and as a pure concept of reason (p. 287). Additionally, the entry presents an examination of the concepts of transcendental freedom, practical freedom and juridical freedom; the latter includes the definition of external freedom as the only innate right and legal freedom as an attribute of the citizen. Each of the concepts mentioned receives a detailed treatment in its own subheading. There is also a reference to the notion of the freedom, or free-play, of the imagination in Kant’s theory of beauty.
The entry ‘M etafísica (Metaphysik, metaphysica)’ begins with the warning that there is no univocal use of the term, even if we confine the search to the Critical period of Kant’s philosophy (p. 310). After this observation, the article adopts a developmental approach to understanding this notion, starting with its definition in the pre-Critical essay Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral and then proceeding to the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft and, finally, to the manuscript of the late Preisschrift on the progress of metaphysics. The article also explains the distinction between metaphysics as a natural disposition and metaphysics as a science, the criteria which allow us to distinguish metaphysics from other sciences (to wit, the source of its knowledge, its way of knowing and its object of knowledge) and the systematic division of metaphysics into metaphysics of nature and metaphysics of morals. In addition, it discusses the appearance in Kant’s philosophy of the classical scheme ‘metaphysica generalis – metaphysica specialis’, a division of metaphysics to be found in the Leibnizian-Wolffian textbooks on the discipline. Finally, it presents the idea of a practical-dogmatic metaphysics as the final stage of the progress of metaphysics (after the theoretical-dogmatic and the sceptical stages) as outlined in the late Preisschrift (p. 316).
The entries of this dictionary are rigorous, well-written and present the material in an accurate fashion. My only complaint concerns how references to Kant’s works are given. They appear as a list at the end of each entry without any indication as to which parts of the text corresponds to which reference. Thus in entries such as ‘E xperiencia (Erfahrung, experientia)’, which contains fourteen subheadings followed by a list of over twenty references to Kant’s oeuvre, relating each reference to the appropriate subheading becomes an arduous task. It would have been preferable for the authors to adopt a more specific system of references, such as references within the text of the entry, or at least at the end of each subheading (this is done sporadically but not in a consistent manner throughout the dictionary).
The Diccionario de la filosofía crítica kantiana is in any case a natural culmination of the vigorous development of Kantian studies in the Spanish language and a stand-alone contribution to Kant scholarship. As the authors state in the introduction, due to continual progress in research and ever-evolving interpretations, the task of compiling an exhaustive lexicon of Kantian philosophy is endless. This fact notwithstanding, the Diccionario is not only a useful resource for the Hispanophone reader but also a valuable reference material for anyone interested in Kant’s Critical philosophy.
