The Case for Absolute Spontaneity in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Con-Textos Kantianos (6):138-164 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Kant describes the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity. What this means is that our capacity to judge what is true is responsible for its own exercises, which is to say that we issue our judgments for ourselves. To issue our judgments for ourselves is to be self-conscious – i.e., conscious of the grounds upon which we judge. To grasp the spontaneity of the understanding, then, we must grasp the self-consciousness of the understanding. I argue that what Kant requires for explaining spontaneity is a conception of judgment as an intrinsic self-consciousness of the total unity of possible knowledge. This excludes what have been called ‘relative’ accounts of the spontaneity of the understanding, according to which our judgments are issued through a capacity fixed by external conditions. If so, then Kant conceives of understanding as entirely active. Or, to put it another way, he conceives of this capacity as absolutely spontaneous.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

"Relative" Spontaneity and Reason's Self-Knowledge.Addison Ellis - 2023 - Studies in Transcendental Philosophy 3 (3).
Spontaneity and Self-Consciousness in the Groundwork and the B-Critique.Yoon Choi - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (7):936-955.
Kant on Cognizing Oneself as a Spontaneous Cognizer.Markus Kohl - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):395-412.
Kant on Freedom of Empirical Thought.Markus Kohl - 2015 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (2):301-26.
Kant on Empirical Self-Consciousness.Janum Sethi - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):79-99.
Reflection, Enlightenment, and the Significance of Spontaneity in Kant.Melissa McBay Merritt - 2009 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (5):981-1010.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-12-15

Downloads
727 (#36,899)

6 months
170 (#24,208)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Addison Ellis
American University in Cairo

Citations of this work

Kant on Self-Consciousness as Self-Limitation.Addison Ellis - 2020 - Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 5.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).David Hume - 1739 - Mineola, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.Wilfrid Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.
Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1781 - Mineola, New York: Macmillan Company. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.

View all 30 references / Add more references