A comparative study of the sayings between the two philosophers, Aristotle and Kant, in a new book

Damascus-SANA

Each philosophical system is based on a set of main concepts or categories, and each philosopher has his own way of employing his categories and linking them to form his own philosophical system that makes him distinct from others.

The categories are the cognitive tools for every philosophical experience and they have different connotations according to the philosophers’ goals and objectives. Researching them, defining them, clarifying their nature, revealing their types, classifications and employment are among the issues worthy of research and attention, which is what was done by the book “The Categories between Aristotle and Kant” by Dr. Ahlam Abdullah

The book issued by the Syrian General Book Organization came as a scientific study that focused in its analyzes and comparisons on two philosophers whose categories constitute the basic structure in the philosophy of each of them, the Greek Aristotle and the German Kant, who each represented a critical stage in the history of philosophical thought.

In the book, the study followed the comparative approach to reveal the points of convergence and difference between Aristotle and Kant to determine the purpose of using the categories. It also relied on the critical method as an effective intellectual tool that helps adhere to objectivity and impartiality and avoid falling into prejudices.

The book, which came in 335 pages, was divided into an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion, where the first chapter bore the title “Historical Framework of the Categories.” It showed the role of the categories in the interpretation of the world and the changes that occur in it.

In the second chapter, “Aristotelian Categories Theory”, in which the researcher touched on the origin of these categories and distinguished between three different opinions about their origin, namely, the logical, then the linguistic and the ontological.

The third chapter is devoted to “categories on the natural, ontological and metaphysical level” to know the role of Aristotelian categories in the philosophy of their natural, ontological and metaphysical owner, some of them express the truth or essence of a thing, and some express some of its symptoms.

“The Categories and their Impact on Kant’s Critical Theory” was the title of the fourth chapter, in which the researcher sought to clarify the critical role of the categories, so she studied the transcendental logic “the philosophy of transcendence” that Kant brought to reveal its mechanism as a tool that lays the foundations, conditions, rules and statements on which knowledge and the laws of knowledge are based. Determining its limits and nature compared to Aristotelian logic

In the fifth chapter, the researcher presented Kant’s “categories and their epistemological dimensions” the method of this philosopher in employing the categories, which was completely different from the Aristotelian employment of them. The categories of Kant have an epistemological role. Therefore, the researcher studied a deduction for a list of these categories to show their importance in the knowledge process.

In the conclusion of the study, the author extensively presented the answers she came up with from the analysis of the categories of both Aristotle and Kant through an analytical and synthetic approach. The analysis helped the researcher to penetrate into the depth of philosophical texts and try to understand the mechanism that was employed by each of the philosophers and adopted the structure in rebuilding the ideas that revealed It is analyzed by analysis in order to arrive at a philosophical vision through which it determines the structure of the categories, their location and how to employ them in each of them.

It is noteworthy that Dr. Ahlam Abdullah, born in Aleppo in 1980, holds a doctorate in philosophy, specializing in traditional logic from Damascus University, and a faculty member at the University of Aleppo, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She is currently the head of the Department of Philosophical Studies. She is a member of the National Committee for the Ethics of Scientific and Technological Knowledge. Published research.

Rasha Mahfoud