A função transcendental do gemüt na crítica da razão pura

Abstract

The Gemüt (animus) is presented here in a double perspective: from one side, as a general faculty of representations (see the chart at the end of the text) and, on the other hand, as a principle of unifi cation of the faculties of knowledge, especially understanding and sensibility, in the Critique of Pure Reason. In one or another case, the reference to the Gemüt involves an open ralationship of knowledge with other faculties. That is why the reason, being seen in analogy with an organism, articulates the knowledge with a whole (human), which refers to the fourth question, introduced in logic, "what is man?", to which all the others can be reduced. Thus, man and Gemüt are equivalent. The human soul, admitted in the Critique of judgment faculty as a principle of life, especially by the link with the body, makes propicious the evocation of Goethe's verses, that contrasts theory and life as a tree, in the fi rst Fausto. But is not an opposition between theory and life, as recognized later by the poet, but to rediscover their close and fruitful relationship, also in the production of human knowledge.