The Transcendentalism of Hope from the Rational Religion to the Phenomenology of Hope with Kant and Marcel

Abstract

Through the distinction transcendental use and transcendental meaning, Kant suggested a de-formalisation of the transcendental that has to be revised both in an ethical and phenomenological sense. These two fields of philosophical knowledge indeed – ethics and phenomenology – are consulted starting from the movement that joins them in the human experience of hope. Right through a phenomenology of hope – announced by Gabriel Marcel – the transcendental by Kant is shown in its absolute topicality. Through this path, the faculty of hoping becomes a configuration rule of existence, without becoming itself an act. As it is inactual, hope remains transcendental and unconstituted, but regulative. The intuition by Kant is reconsidered and the de-formalised transcendental can be questioned starting from concrete human experiences. Now we have to find again in hope the phenomenological content of the transcendental, and in the transcendental the pure shape of the experience of hope.

«What use can we make of our understanding, even in respect of experience, if we do not propose ends to ourselves?»

(Krv, B 845).¹