Common World and Wisdom in Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics(1766)

Abstract

Immanuel Kant’s Dreams of a spirit-seer elucidated by dreams of metaphysics (1766) presents a juxtaposed and openly ironic treatment of two apparently heterogenious subjects: the way of doing metaphysics common in the Seventeenth-Century German context and Emmanuel Swedenborg’s supernatural visions. This article reviews a interpretative ambivalence internal to the work originally identified by Moses Mendelssohn, which springs from its thematic juxtaposition. According to the two stances from the ambivalence one may classify the work’s historical reception. Furthermore, the insufficiency of some common strategies for interpreting the text will be shown, and a new one is proposed on the basis of two notions that appear within the text, that is, the will of ensuring a common world and the notion of wisdom. As a result of these notions and on the basis of a letter that Kant wrote to Mendelssohn, a reading of this work is proposed, which is finally situated with respect to the two readings of the interpretative ambivalence initially presented.