Transcendental and Normative Critique: Convergence or Opposition?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31874/2309-1606-2024-30-2-6Keywords:
transcendental critique, normativity, possibility, conditions of possibility, «oughtness», reflexivityAbstract
The article analyzes the phenomenon of transcendental critique in relation to normative critique. The author, initially distinguishing between transcendental and normative critical discourses as distinct and, in certain respects, oppositional philosophical attitudes, then identifies some aspects and ways of their partial mutual overlapping; and vice versa, on the basis of certain points of commonality, the parameters of the fundamental difference between the transcendental and normative critical approaches are determined. The theoretical basis of the study is the author’s conceptualization of transcendental thinking, within the framework of which the analysis of transcendental and normative criticism is carried out. The conceptual vantage point of the analysis is the considering of transcendental discourse as a critical discourse par excellence. Noting the ambivalence of the term “normative critique” (which means both critique of normativity and critique based on normativity), the author argues that, however, in both cases, such criticism is carried out (1) from the point of view of a certain normative basis and (2) with the aim of establishing or re-establishing certain normative principles. In contrast to the prescriptiveness, result-orientedness, and external nature of normative critique, transcendental one is defined as primarily reflective critique – or critical reflection. Normativity appears to be built into transcendental discourse, and so the distinction between transcendental and normative critique appears to be an immanent component of transcendental philosophy (similar to the distinction between the transcendental and the empirical). The ultimacy of critical inquiry, inherent in transcendental critique as opposed to normative one, is based on the factor of (self)reflexivity, the function of which in transcendental-critical discourse is crucial. Reflection “postpones” the final adoption and validation (that are inherent in a normative attitude but can be considered as some dogmatization from a transcendental-critical point of view), and becomes a condition of possibility of critical questioning “again and again”.
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