Common sense and philosophy

Abstract

Although little known and studied in our time, the Russian neo-Kantian philosopher, of Greco-German origin, Afrikan Spir, produced an original work that had important repercussions in its time. Born shortly before Nietzsche in 1837, Spir will be quoted by him, above all, as regards the questions that involve the transcendental character of knowledge. After all, like Kant, Spir argues that the world appears to us mediated by our sensitivity; mediated and organized by the a priori structures of knowledge, that is, from the world we receive only sensory impressions, sensitive qualities, and it is up to the cognoscenti subject to order them from their intuitions. However, in Spir’s critical philosophy, the only true a priori is the principle of identity, which would be responsible for the synthesis of knowledge, either of ourselves or of the objects of the world. In short words, according to Spir, and contesting common sense and scientific objectivism itself, there is nothing that is stable and absolute outside of us. All absolute refers to thought. Even the I is nothing more than a synthesis operated by consciousness.