Res Admirabilae: Lietuviđkoji Ikikritinës I. Kanto Filosofijos Recepcija
Res Admirabilae: Lithuanian Reception of the Pre-critical Philosophy of I. Kant

Summary/Abstract: This article argues that the Lithuanian priest, Kazimieras Narbutas (1738-1807), was the philosopher who had the honour of being the first in East, and maybe in the whole Europe, to receive and criticize the pre-critical thinking of Immanuel Kant. In 1765, in his course of philosophy at the Collegium of piars in Dàbrowicy, Narbutas criticizes the concept of substance suggested by “metaphysician Cantzius”. A person named “Cantzius” could have been Immanuel Kant, or the theologian Gottlieb Israel Canz. Objecting to the position of Steponas Tunaitis, two arguments are developed in this article: the person, who was referred to by Narbutas, could not have been Canz, since the latter was a representative of the theologian Christian Wolff. This philosophical position is close to that of Narbutas himself, his concept of the essence of the substance is the same as that of School of Wolff. Canz could not have presented a concept of substance that was opposite to the School of Wolff. The second argument is that the principal propositions (and their consequentials) of Kant provided in his work of 1755 Principorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio could be attributed to the positions of the “metaphysician Cantzius” on the substance, the attributes and the goals of God, which had been questioned by Narbutas. This parallel provides us with an opportunity to state, that Narbutas directly or indirectly has been acquainted with the above mentioned work of Kant and that the person, referred to in the text of Narbutas, is nobody but Kant, who had been dealing with metaphysical matters at that time.

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