Immanuel Kant and the Pragmatic Turn of Science Through the Prism of Sergei Bulgakov’s Metaphysics

Abstract

In the early 20th century, science reveals its instrumental and conventional character. These pragmatic features, according to Sergei Bulgakov, underscore the dependence of scientific claims on human qualities and purposes. Science is anthropologised; therefore, philosophy of science can be regarded as a part of philosophical anthropology. The pragmatic turn of science, Bulgakov argues, had a Kantian impulse. In 1912 book “Philosophy of Economy”, Bulgakov advances a metaphysical view on science in a dispute with his critical interlocutors – Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Heinrich Rickert, and their prominent predecessor Immanuel Kant. This paper shows that despite a fundamental disagreement concerning the notion of the transcendental subject, Bulgakov does not disprove the utility of Kant’s transcendental theory of knowledge. He rather points out the limits of this theory (Kant primarily insisted on) and overrides those limits as dispensable for philosophy, which does not have to be a formal science.