Il corso della storia come graduale "emancipazione" della ragione dal "grembo materno" della natura: L'alternativa kantiana a herder

The image of the "womb of nature", from which human reason must emancipate itself in order to gain freedom, is used by Kant in a pamphlet against Herder. This was the Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), which can be considered a response to the tenth book of Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, published in 1785. Following the biblical account, Kant imagines the first two human beings in a "garden", a place safe and well-stocked with food; but the real beginning of history consists in the disruption of this balance produced by reason. Human reason gradu...