GUILHERME DE OLIVEIRA FREITAS

This study aims to address the issue of the legitimacy of the exposition of the supreme principle of practical reason, presented using mathematical terms such as “theorem,” “scholium,” and others, in the first chapter of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. To achieve this, the research begins with an examination of Christian Wolff's philosophy and his influence on the development of Kantian thought. By reconstructing Wolff’s thesis on the identity of philosophical and mathematical methods, we highlight Kant’s break, in the Critique of Pure Reason, with the methods and concepts of philosophy and mathematics. This break leads to what we define as a broadening of the concept of Erklärung, shaped by a typology of concepts specific to critical philosophy, identified through the Germanized Latin terms Declaration, Definition, Explication, and Exposition. After clarifying the meaning of each of these terms, the study moves on to analyze the exposition provided in the first chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, titled On the Principles of Pure Practical Reason. This analysis seeks to understand the legitimacy of using Erklärung in §1, a matter debated by commentators and translators of Kant's work. Drawing on the historical evolution of the term, its applications within critical philosophy, and its potential translations, this research argues that the Erklärung in §1 should be interpreted as an Exposition. This interpretation, however, necessitates an examination of the concept of the object of the exposition in the first chapter, which is given a priori, as well as an assessment of the completeness of this exposition, which allows for the determination of its Definition. Ultimately, this reinterpretation of the Exposition, informed by the Discipline of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason, provides a framework to position the doctrine of the fact of reason at the core of the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason. It also sheds light on how this doctrine can be interpreted in relation to the negative concept of freedom.