Leuven Kant Conference 2025: Kant's Metaphilosophy
May 29th to May 31st, 2025
Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium
Format: online and on campus
The Leuven Kant Conference aims to facilitate open exchanges between established scholars, early career researchers, and PhD students. The conference features a combination of on-campus and online talks. The online talks will be fully online, i.e., all participants will join a Zoom meeting regardless of their location. All talks will take place between 1 pm and 7 pm to accommodate different time zones. The 2025 edition of the conference is devoted to Kant's metaphilosophy.
LKC 2025: Kant's Metaphilosophy
Whereas the quest for a new philosophical method was a goal shared by many modern philosophers, Kant was arguably among the first to take reflections on philosophy to be part of philosophy as such. He conceived of the Critique of Pure Reason as a court for settling philosophical controversies (Axi) and aimed to establish a new kind of philosophy, which he called transcendental philosophy. In another context, he termed this new philosophy a “metaphysics of metaphysics” (AA 10: 269). Kant further used the term “critical philosophy” (AA 05: 5) to denote his inquiries into both the theoretical and practical domains of human rationality. In addition, Kant distinguished between a scholastic and a cosmic concept of philosophy and conceived of the latter as “the science of the relation of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason” (A 839/B 867), thereby suggesting that philosophy is pertinent to existential questions. No less significantly, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant claims that the concept of purposiveness is key to bringing together the theoretical and practical uses of reason, which suggests that teleological motives are central to Kant’s conception of philosophy as a whole. This raises the question as to whether these various accounts of philosophy are coherent. In view of this apparent plurality, the conference aims to foreground Kant’s views on the tasks and status of philosophy.
Organizers: Luis Fellipe Garcia (KU Leuven), Henny Blomme (Université libre de Bruxelles), and Leone Zellini (KU Leuven)

Leuven Kant Conference Committee
Karin de Boer (KU Leuven), Arnaud Pelletier (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Luis Fellipe Garcia (KU Leuven), Henny Blomme (Université libre de Bruxelles), and Leone Zellini (KU Leuven)