La realtà delle categorie nel pensiero di Oswald Külpe

This article aims to study the articulation of Oswald Külpe’s critical realism, with particular stress on the subject of categories doctrine and on the role that it takes on in opposing to objective idealism and, more broadly, to the overcoming of Kantian transcendentalism and the phenomenalism strictly related to it. Starting from an exploration concerning the Aristotelian conception of categories and the comparison that Heidegger makes with Külpe’s thought, also with regard to the role that has to be ascribed to categories themselves, an analysis of the whole Külpean Kategorienlehre has been done by taking into consideration the principle of category differentiation, the criterion of their application and their fundamentally gnoseo- logical function. In this way the sense of Külpean reflection has been clarified, through which categories are not conceived as functions of thought or pure forms of intellect, but they are Aristotelically understood as objectual determinations. The es- say points out too as the Külpean layout is not able to provide a suitable solution to the problems it deals with, as the distance from a genuine notion of ontology shows the metaphysical naivety remaining in the philosophical and categorical project of Külpe.