La cosa en sí y el fenomenalismo de Oberst: crítica desde la metodología de derecho kantiana

This paper critically analyzes Oberst’s phenomenalist interpretation of Kant’s philosophy through an examination of the ontological scheme underlying his position. It is argued that the claim to confer objective existence to the thing-in-itself —and to derive from it some kind of knowledge, albeit indeterminate— is incompatible with Kant’s de jure methodology that characterizes his criticism. This methodology, in the way it is here articulated, is concerned with the conditions that legitimize certain claims and, in the theoretical case, is restrictive with respect to the validity of cognitive judgments to the limits of possible experience, what reveals that Oberst’s phenomenalist interpretation invalidly reduces every transcendental condition to a fact (factum) from which it introduces an ontological dualism between the phenomena and the transcendental. Thus, the paper argues against Oberst’s phenomenalist reduction of the appearance to a mental content, while justifying that this interpretation exacerbates the tensions inherent to the debate about the thing-in-itself.