Ein Missing Link in der Geschichte der Transzendentalphilosophie. Die Longue durée des akademischen Aristotelismus bei Kant

In the debated question of the relationship between Kant and the previous tradition, the influence of the german scholastic Aristotelianism on the critical writings represents a very important chapter. The essays of Giorgio Tonelli showed a kantian dependence from the terminology of this tradition, but they could not describe an effective source. Thanks to the recent rediscovery of the Order of Studies of the university of Königsberg at the time of Kant, in this contribution I will try to demonstate that a direct link can be found, namely through Franz Albert Aepinus, and that this link is very relevant for the title-concept of the critical philosophy: the word “transcendental”. On the basis of the great relevance of this term in Kant and in the scholastic tradition I will then propose the thesis that the kantian transcendental philosophy can be interpreted as an answer to a structural problem of the scholastic transcendental philosophy: the contemporary necessity and impossibility to presuppose a transcendence. And as the question is posed by both theoretical realms on a predicative plane, it can be read as the necessity and impossibility of a prepredicative plane. An often searched “missing link” between the scholastical and the kantian tradition of the transcendental is therefore now available. And the common explanation of the passage between the two periods with the contraposition of “theory of knowledge” and “ontology” – that guides even the actual widespread research on the supertranscendental concepts – appears to be inadequate.