VOL. IV (XXI) 2009 - Departamentul de Filosofie si Stiinte ale ...

47 THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF GOD AND “THE NEW EPISTEMOLOGICAL IDEALISM”
of objectivity” (LOP, p. 31).
15 Alois Riehl, Der philosophische Kritizismus. Geschichte und System, Band I:
Geschichte des philosophischen Kritizismus, 2. Aufl., (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, ,
1908), 584.
16 Viorel Colţescu, Immanuel Kant (Timişoara: Tipografia Universităţii de Vest, 1996),
p. 118.
17 LOP, 9.
18 Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann), 1929.
19 Ibid., p. 25.
20 Colţescu, op. cit., pp. 119-120.
21 Colţescu, op. cit., p. 120. I also found very useful and inspiring Colţescu’s
insightful “Kantian Readings” (Lecturi kantiene) from his book Filosofia şi istoria ei
(Timişoara: Editura de Vest, 1996), pp. 77-141.
22 At this point, Collingwood’s later remarks made in The Idea of Nature seem
relevant for my interpretation of his view (including that held in LOP) on Kant’s implicit
ontology as significantly convergent with Heidegger’s: “Kant never for a moment
thought that the thing in itself was unknowable in the sense in which his critics
understand this statement. The words wissen, Wissenschaft in Kant have the same
kind of special or restricted significance that the word ‘science’ has in ordinary
modern English. Science is not the same as knowledge in general; it is a special kind
or form of knowledge whose proper object is nature … Kant has not given us a theory
of knowledge in the modern sense of the term … and when he said that we could
think the thing in itself though we could not know it he meant that we had knowledge
of it but not scientific knowledge.” [Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1945), p. 118]. This idea can arguably be interpreted as convergent
with Collingwood’s assertion, made in The Idea of History, that “Kant’s method
[implies that] … a category … like causation … can be used and must be used [only]
if we are to have Newtonian science.” [The Idea of History, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1946; reprinted 1993), p. 229], or even with his earlier claim, expressed in
Religion and Philosophy, that “Kant … had seemed to suggest that the theoretical
faculty of the mind—the knowing faculty [which underlies science]—was incapable of
arriving at ultimate truth.” [R.G. Collingwood, Religion and Philosophy (London:
Macmillan & Co., 1916), p. 22.] Moreover, it appears that this interpretation can help
us to understand that actually Collingwood never ceased to be a(n idealistic, or
logical) realist who believed—at least implicitly—in the existence of the perennial
objects of philosophical (metaphysical) knowledge, among which God—as both
transcendent and immanent, either as symbol or as person—appears to represent
the avant-garde topic of the whole enterprise.
23 LOP, p. 69.
24 Ibid., p. 78, italics added.
25 Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940),
p. 233.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., pp. 233-4.
28 LOP, p. 15.
29 Felser, op. cit., p. 339.
30 LOP, p. 96.
31 Ibid., p. 24