SPIRIT/GHOSTS FR KANT-MARX(ENG)

When Kant was writing a treatise about true and false apparitions, showmen were deploying the  magic lantern to terrify audiences with projected phantoms. Kant's ambivalence toward spirits  remained formative for his critical philosophy. On the one hand, he insisted that we can only gain  knowledge about appearances. Yet these appearances are somehow related to a supersensory  thing-in-itself. At the same time, he warned against the transcendental illusion of speculative  reason by comparing it to the optical mirage of the magic lantern. The optical medium thus became  an epistemic figure for the limits of philosophical knowledge. This course traces that constellation  and its recurrence through the philosophical theories of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Marx. Lectures,  discussions, and readings will be in English.