Seeking a Logic of objectivity: the Categories in Salomon Maimon's Transcendental Philosophy

The present article aims to investigate the status of Categories as conceptualized in Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. Although this topic has garnered less scholarly attention than Maimonian skepticism, or his theory of differentials, yet it is central to evaluating Maimon’s recasting of Critical philosophy. To justify this interpretative line, the paper first reconstructs the most significant inquiries into Categories within the Essay (Introduction and § 1). Following this analytical overview, the article shows a link between Maimon’s conception of Categories and the demand for a new logic of objectivity. Specifically, we address Maimon’s requirement for a complete system of the Categories (§2). Finally, we demonstrate how Maimon’s transformation of transcendental logic constitutively affects the status of Categories from logical and ontological standpoints (§3). These analyses evaluate Maimon’s place in the history of post-Kantian philosophy (Conclusion), presenting him both as a Kantian respondent and as an autonomous thinker.