Kant maintains that his Critique of Pure Reason follows a “synthetic method” which he distinguishes from the analytic method of the Prolegomena by saying that the Critique “rests on no other science” and “takes nothing as given except reason itself”. The paper presents an account of the synthetic method of the Critique, showing how it is related to Kant’s conception of the Critique as the “science of an a priori judging (...) reason”. Moreover, the author suggests, understanding its synthetic method sheds light on the structure of the Transcendental Deduction, and its function in the work as a whole. (shrink)

How we read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has a huge influence on how convincing we find the parts of which it is composed. This thesis will argue that by taking its arguments and concepts in isolation we neglect the unifying architectonic method that Kant employed. Understanding this text as a response to a single problem, that of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgement, will allow us to evaluate it more fully. We will explore Kant's (...) attempts to relate the a priori and the synthetic in the Introduction, Metaphysical Deduction and Analytic of Principles of the Critique of Pure Reason. Having developed this reading at length we will be able to reassess Kant's relation to the work of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze's critique of Kant and his tendency to make selective use of his work has so far characterised their relations. However, by reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in terms of its unifying method we will open up a new means of relating these two thinkers. Whilst Deleuze rejects many key Kantian concerns and concepts he embraces his methodological concern with the ability of problems to unify our thought. The problem-setting and forms of argument that emerge within Kant's architectonic method will be related to Deleuze's account of experience. This thesis will contribute to both Kant and Deleuze studies on the basis of the reading of the Critique of Pure Reason it will present. By showing how Kant's text is to be read as a whole we will be able to challenge the conclusion that the arguments he makes ultimately rely upon a notion of 'subjective origin'. The problem of accounting for 'the actual' through its relation to 'the virtual' in Deleuze's thought will be re-assessed on the basis of his newly established relation with Kant. Understanding Kant's method in the Critique of Pure Reason will be shown to strengthen both his own account of experience and that offered by Deleuze. (shrink)

My response to Gabriele Gava’s Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (2023) focuses on Kant’s conception of the role of critique in the Critique of Pure Reason. On my account, Gava’s emphasis on the constructive elements of the Critique downplays the critique of former metaphysics elaborated in all three parts of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements. After some comments on Kant’s conception of the Critique as (...) a doctrine of method, I support this view by discussing the relation between transcendental philosophy and transcendental critique, Kant’s analysis of the faculties, and his transcendental deduction of space. (shrink)

This chapter considers Kant's relation to Hume as Kant himself understood it when he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena. It first seeks to refine the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism, and it then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three works: the A Critique, Prolegomena, and B Critique. It argues that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and (...) a spur toward critique. In his initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who stopped short of what was really needed: a full critique of reason, to establish the boundaries of metaphysical cognition. Kant found fault with Hume's analyses of cognition and experience, and specifically his failure to see the crucial importance of synthetic a priori cognition in metaphysics. In particular, he held that Hume's empiricist account of cognition could neither explain the synthetic a priori cognition actually found in mathematics and natural science, nor provide a principled account of the limits on what can be known--and what can be thought--through the pure concepts of the understanding. According to Kant, Hume therefore failed in his attempt to determine the limits of metaphysics, whereas he was able to succeed because his transcendental philosophy provided a thorough account of cognition, its structure and limits. In the Prolegomena and the B Critique Kant distinguished his position more sharply from Hume's. He also adopted a more negative attitude toward "skeptical idealism" than before; but he attributed such skepticism to Descartes, not Hume. Prior to the B Critique Kant did not see Hume as attacking natural science or ordinary cognition. In none of the three works was Kant's main aim to "answer the skeptic." His primary aim was to firmly establish the boundary of metaphysics, by discovering the elements of human cognition and fixing its proper domain. His purported discoveries about the limits of metaphysical cognition meant that the traditional objects of metaphysical knowledge, God, the soul, and the world as it is in itself, are unknowable, hence that traditional metaphysics itself is impossible. Besides settling the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, his findings would also prevent the illegitimate extension of principles of sensibility to God and the noumenal self, an extension that would threaten the metaphysics of morals by incorrectly denying the thinkability of noumenal freedom, and that might otherwise lead to "materialism, fatalism, atheism, and freethinking unbelief" (B xxxiv). (shrink)

The paper argues that existing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as an "analysis of experience" (e.g., those of Kitcher and Strawson) fail because they do not properly appreciate the method of the work. The author argues that the Critique provides an analysis of the faculty of reason, and counts as an analysis of experience only in a derivative sense.

This article addresses Kant's distinction between a synthetic and an analytic method in philosophy. I will first consider how some commentators have accounted for Kant's distinction and analyze some passages in which Kant defined the analytic and the synthetic method. I will suggest that confusion about Kant's distinction arises because he uses it in at least two different senses. I will then identify a specific way in which Kant accounts for this distinction when he is differentiating between mathematical (...) and philosophical syntheses. I will examine Kant's arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason with the latter sense of the distinction in mind. I will evaluate if he uses the analytic or the synthetic method and if the synthetic method is able to identify, without a previous consideration of some sort of given knowledge, sufficient conditions for deriving some aspects of our knowledge. (shrink)

In two often neglected passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant submits that the Critique is a 'treatise' or a 'doctrine of method'. These passages are puzzling because the Critique is only cursorily concerned with identifying adequate procedures of argument for philosophy. In this book, Gabriele Gava argues that these passages point out that the Critique is the doctrine of method of metaphysics. Doctrines of method have the task of showing (...) that a given science is indeed a science because it possesses 'architectonic unity' – which happens when it realizes the 'idea' of a science. According to Gava's novel approach, the Critique establishes that metaphysics is capable of this unity, and his reading of the Critique from this perspective not only illuminates the central role of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method within it, but also clarifies the relationship between the different parts of the work. (shrink)

Se busca precisar cómo la Crítica de la razón pura responde al problema fundamental del Iluminismo alemán: la articulación entre la autoridad de la razón y la fe. Kant busca rescatar las intenciones del racionalista dogmático -compatibilizar la fe y la razón-, pero rechaza el racionalismo y su método. La "Antinomia de la razón pura" y la "Disciplina de la razón pura" llevan a cabo esta estrategia: la primera evidencia que el racionalismo no puede fundamentar la fe por medio de (...) la razón y elucida el origen de esta incapacidad; la segunda se distancia del método racionalista utilizado en las pruebas de la "Antinomia". Queda así abierto el camino para una razón finita pero crítica, capaz de ser restituida al lugar de autoridad que la Ilustración le ha reservado. This article seeks to show how the Critique of Pure Reason answers the fundamental problem of the German Enlightenment: the linkage between the authority of reason and faith. Kant seeks to rescue the intentions of the dogmatic rationalist -reconcile faith and reason- but rejects rationalism and its method. The "Antinomy of Pure Reason" and the "Discipline of Pure Reason" accomplish this strategy: the first shows that rationalism cannot justify faith by means of reason and clarifies the origin of this incapability; the second distances itself from the rationalist method using the proofs of the "Antinomy". This leaves room for a finite but critical reason, able to be reinstated to the place of authority that the Enlightenment has reserved for it. (shrink)

Review of Gabriele Gava's Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics.

Kant is the central figure of modern philosophy. He sought to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, and he succeeded in permanently changing its problems and methods. This new translation of the Prolegomena, which is the best introduction to his philosophy, presents his thought clearly by paying careful attention to his original language. Also included are selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, which fill out and explicate some of Kant's central arguments, and in which Kant himself (...) explains his special terminology. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction, explanatory notes, a chronology and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

The Critique of Pure Reason—Kant’s First Critique—is one of the most studied texts in intellectual history, but as Alfredo Ferrarin points out in this radically original book, most of that study has focused only on very select parts. Likewise, Kant’s oeuvre as a whole has been compartmentalized, the three Critiques held in rigid isolation from one another. Working against the standard reading of Kant that such compartmentalization has produced, The Powers of Pure Reason explores (...) forgotten parts of the First Critique in order to find an exciting, new, and ultimately central set of concerns by which to read all of Kant’s works. Ferrarin blows the dust off of two egregiously overlooked sections of the First Critique—the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method. There he discovers what he argues is the Critique’s greatest achievement: a conception of the unity of reason and an exploration of the powers it has to reach beyond itself and legislate over the world. With this in mind, Ferrarin dismantles the common vision of Kant as a philosopher writing separately on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics and natural teleology, showing that the three Critiques are united by this underlying theme: the autonomy and teleology of reason, its power and ends. The result is a refreshing new view of Kant, and of reason itself. (shrink)

I consider a problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism if one construes it as a claim that human beings know from a particular, human perspective. Namely: ordinarily, when we speak someone seeing from a perspective, we understand other people to have other perspectives, and think that people can change their perspectives by moving away from them, to a different one. So one may recognize that one’s own perspective is a perspective: by comparing to others, by seeing a former perspective from a (...) new vantage point. But Kant denies such plurality and variability for his human cognitive perspective. Thus one may worry that Kant’s view is incoherent: Kant claims that we can know only from one perspective, yet, in order to recognize that perspective as such, he himself must stand "outside" of it. I consider a potential Kantian response to this charge, by way of interpreting the Dialectic of the first Critique. When one attempts to know things that lie beyond experience, one attempts to exit the human perspective; in the Dialectic, Kant argues that in doing so, one falls into contradictions and empty thinking. These failed attempts, I suggest, allow human knowers (and Kant describing them) to recognize the human perspective as such – by taking up a different vantage point, as it were – but also, as failures, do not constitute a true alternative to the universally shared, necessary human cognitive perpsective. So, I propose, can one interpret Kant’s claim in the B Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason that the Dialectic is a confirming result – a “splendid touchstone” -- in an a priori experiment: it is an experimental, failed attempt to exit the human perspective. (shrink)

The present study is the result of two questions which arose in dealing with the Critique of Pure Reason. What is the relationship of the “Doctrine of Method” to the “Doctrine of Elements?” Does the “Doctrine of Method” tell us anything important about Kant and his philosophy? It will be the contention of this paper that the second half of the Critique relies heavily on the “Doctrine of Elements,” and is a natural expansion of (...) the first half of the Critique. In effect, this is a tentative denial of Norman Kemp Smith’s patchwork thesis. With respect to the second question mentioned above, we shall see that Kant does have a very special place for methodology in his philosophy. This methodology of philosophy has implications for a theory of the division of the sciences and the method proper to each of them. (shrink)

A feature of several recent, significant works on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) is the tendency, informed by paying proper attention to the Architectonic of Pure Reason, to take Kant’s syste...

Gabriele Gava's new monograph makes sense of Kant's obscure claim that the Critique of Pure Reason is a "doctrine of method" for the science of metaphysics. Gava does this by offering a reading of the whole Critique as aiming to show that metaphysics can become an "architectonic" science. The book shows impressive range; it covers diverse topics throughout the Aesthetic, Analytic, Dialectic, and Method, brings out appealing parallels between them, and relates them to the (...) task of exhibiting metaphysic's architectonic unity. But, I argue, it stops short of a full explanation of how the Critique is meant to outline or anticipate the whole of metaphysics in advance of actually completing that science. (shrink)

I raise three objections for Gava’s thesis that the primary task of the Critique of Pure Reason is to develop a doctrine of method for metaphysics, understood as an account of the special kind of unity that a body of cognitions must exhibit to count as a science. First, I argue that this thesis has difficulty accommodating Kant’s concern with explaining the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements. This concern is motivated by a question that is (...) prior to the issue of scientific unity. Second, I argue that the context of the passage in which Kant calls the Critique a treatise on method makes clear that the remark concerns the Copernican Turn. This suggests that the method treated in the book is the procedure required by the Copernican Turn. Third, I dispute Gava’s claim that the idea that confers unity on metaphysics is the cosmopolitan concept of philosophy. (shrink)

The chapter first discusses the general meaning of a 'doctrine of method' in Kant’s work, as well as the specific goals of the Doctrine of Method of the second Critique. The central section, then, focuses on the notion of 'receptivity to morality', which here has a central role and a quite distinct meaning. I argue that Kant’s main point in his account of how to 'make objective practical reason subjectively practical' (5:151) is that one ought to (...) lead the individual agent to become aware of his own dignity as a moral being. In Kant’s view, recognition of this point is relevant to the overall aim of the second Critique – to show that pure reason is practical – and of moral theory itself. The task of the Doctrine of Method is to show how it is possible to make agents aware of their basic moral capacities, and through that awareness to instil genuine moral dispositions. Accordingly, the Doctrine of Method is the completion of the Critique, confirming the conclusions of the Analytic through the common use of pure practical reason and connecting them with the experience of every moral agent. (shrink)

Kant characterizes Critique of Pure Reason as “a treatise on the method”. But he does not clearly work out the Doctrine of Method of the Critique. Most interpreters of the Critique do not work out the Doctrine of Method either. This paper outlines the systematic place and significance of the Doctrine of Method within the structure of the Critique. It suggests that the Doctrine of Method supplies the methodological conditions, (...) or systematic laws, of possible cognitions of reason. In other words, the Doctrine of Method is the primary locus of critique or reason’s self-cognition, i.e., reason’s cognition of the laws that make its possible cognitions systematic. (shrink)

Kant is the central figure of modern philosophy. He sought to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, and he succeeded in permanently changing its problems and methods. This revised edition of the Prolegomena, which is the best introduction to the theoretical side of his philosophy, presents his thought clearly by paying careful attention to his original language. Also included are selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, which fill out and explicate some of Kant's central arguments, and (...) in which Kant himself explains his special terminology. The first reviews of the Critique, to which Kant responded in the Prolegomena, are included in this revised edition. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction, explanatory notes, a chronology, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Kant uses incongruent counterparts in his work before and after 1781, but not in the first Critique. Given the relevance that incongruent counterparts had for his thought on space, and their persistence in his work during the 1780s, it is plausible to think that he had a reason for leaving them out of both editions of the Critique. Two implausible conjectures for their absence are here considered and rejected. A more plausible alternative is put forth, which explains (...) that textual absence as a result of the synthetic method of presentation intended for the Critique. (shrink)

Kant is the central figure of modern philosophy. He sought to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, and he succeeded in permanently changing its problems and methods. This revised edition of the Prolegomena, which is the best introduction to the theoretical side of his philosophy, presents his thought clearly by paying careful attention to his original language. Also included are selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, which fill out and explicate some of Kant's central arguments, and (...) in which Kant himself explains his special terminology. The first reviews of the Critique, to which Kant responded in the Prolegomena, are included in this revised edition. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction, explanatory notes, a chronology, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Most interpretations of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason focus on its Doctrine of Elements, and ignore that the Doctrine of Elements needs to be grounded systematically in the Doctrine of Method. As a step toward remedying such neglect, this paper outlines the relation between the Doctrine of Elements and the Doctrine of Method within the Critique. It lays out the three systematic needs implied in the Doctrine of Elements, and shows that, in Kant’s account, (...) these needs can be satisfied only in the Doctrine of Method. In doing so, the paper reveals the systematic dependence of the elements of cognitions on the method of cognition from pure reason. (shrink)

This paper defends a constructive interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason, which is built in analogy with an experimental construction that Kant believes to characteristic of chemistry. I also argue for a way to reconcile the methodological perspective of the constructivist method with that of transcendental reflection. I therefore provide a constructive explanation for what Kant describes as being pure reason and the argument of the transcendental deduction. I propose to frame the different (...) perspectives in such a way that the experimental construction is the ratio cognoscendi of pure reason, while pure reason is the ratio essendi of the experimental construction. O’Neill (1989, 2015) is one of the most important scholars that have argued for a constructivist reading of the Critique of pure reason (CPR). In this paper I develop and explore new aspects of this line of interpretation. One of the main criticisms raised against constructivist readings of Kant’s philosophy is an alleged commitment to subjectivism or voluntarism (cf. Kleingeld & Willaschek 2019). This concern led some scholars to rename their position as constitutivist instead (Korsgaard 2009; Sensen 2013, 2017; Formosa 2011). Constitutivism, is intended to be a sort of constructivism capable of avoiding voluntarism. However, it becomes difficult, sometimes, to differentiate between the constitutivist and foundationalist positions, which are based on transcendental reflection and imply a sort of realist perspective on reason. The same preoccupation applies to the constructivist interpretation of the CPR. In order to deal with this issue, the following questions must be addressed: how can constructivism justify the necessity and universality of transcendental principles of pure reason without compromising the normative and procedural aspects of the construction? How to reconcile arguments based on the analysis of representations and faculties with a constructivist procedure? Or even, how may transcendental reflection, as a view of the possibility of a priori cognition, be rendered compatible with a constructive procedure? This paper is divided into three sections, followed by brief final remarks. The first section outlines the main characteristics of constructivism and relates them to Kant’s positions about the nature of philosophy and its method. The second part argues for a type of experimental constructivism that might serve as a guiding analogy to understand the method underlying the CPR. Thirdly, I will show how the transcendental subject and pure reason are derived from this experimental construction. The conclusion briefly points out some advantages of this position. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how Maimon’s method of fic- tions deals with the specific problems raised by one of his skeptical arguments, namely the quid facti. This argument leads Maimon to adopt what is sometimes called a ‘system interpretation’ of the necessity of empirical laws. Since Maimon thinks that transcendental philosophy cannot prove the fact that the categories have objective validity, he infers that hence systematization, and not the catego- ries, is what constitutes the source of necessity in (...) empirical laws. Yet, systemat- ization can only ever yield high probability but never apodictic necessity. Conse- quently, Maimon proposes to understand theoretical philosophy as science that employs and indeed can only employ the method of fictions. Since neither phil- osophical, nor physical laws can claim objective validity, philosophical princi- ples must be understood as useful fictions. Thereby, philosophy engages in a form of modeling-practice that delivers descriptions of the conceptual conditions that would be required for our scientific judgments to be justified. (shrink)

Kant uses incongruent counterparts in his work before and after 1781, but not in the first Critique. Given the relevance that incongruent counterparts had for his thought on space, and their persistence in his work during the 1780s, it is plausible to think that he had a reason for leaving them out of both editions of the Critique. Two implausible conjectures for their absence are here considered and rejected. A more plausible alternative is put forth, which explains (...) that textual absence as a result of the synthetic method of presentation intended for the Critique. (shrink)

I respond to Karin de Boer, Thomas Land, and Claudio La Rocca’s comments on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023). I first provide a quick outline of some of the main claims I make in the book. I then directly address their criticisms, which I group into three categories. The first group of comments raises doubts concerning my characterization of the central tasks of the critique of pure (...) class='Hi'>reason. The second targets the fact that I downplay faculty analysis as an essential characteristic of the critique. The third has to do with my claim that the Critique of Pure Reason aims to show that metaphysics is capable of architectonic unity, where this unity is only achievable when we construe metaphysics according to the worldly concept of philosophy. (shrink)

First published in 1962. Kant’s philosophical works, and especially the _Critique of Pure Reason_, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant’s arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In _Kant’s Theory of Knowledge _an attempt is made to relate Kant’s arguments in the _Critique of Pure Reason _to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended (...) to present a continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the _Critique_. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant’s criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy. (shrink)

Bayesian approaches to human cognition have been extensively advocated in the last decades, but sharp objections have been raised too within cognitive science. In this paper, we outline a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with the prevalent strand of Bayesian cognitive science (here labelled pure Bayesian cognitive science), relying on selected illustrations from the psychology of reasoning and tools from the philosophy of science. Bayesians’ reliance on so-called method of rational analysis is a key point of our (...) discussion. We tentatively conclude on a constructive note, though: an appropriately modified variant of Bayesian cognitive science can still be coherently pursued, as some scholars have noted. (shrink)

: The article examines the metapher proposed by Kant in order to clarify how our mind attains knowledge of reality, and consequently according to what method we should work out a new metaphysics. The judge succeeds in knowing a juridical reality in so far as he asks the witnesses questions which he himself formulates. Hence Kant draws the conclusion that reason learns from nature only what she herself has put into nature. Now the problem lies in clarifying how (...) the active-creative moment and the receptive moment in human knowledge refer to one another . Kant acknowledges initially the complementarity of both moments. But since he had failed to grasp clearly the real distinction between the anticipatory-constructive capacity of our understanding and the following critical-reflective capacity of the same he ended up by making the first moment prevail unilaterally. The consequence is the idealist interpretation of knowing and being to which the first Critique leads. Also the later attempts could not overcome the impasse. This would have required both revisimg radically the intuition-principle in its sensist version and to acknowledge that the dynamism of intellect refers to reality, although it needs the data of experience to know it. (shrink)

Based on some interpretations about the Critique of Pure Reason, the author holds a real answer to the question about the possibility of Metaphysics remains in the uncertainty there. Without any proper Conclusion of the work, this question is displaced to the background and it is, in certain way, superseded by the question about God's existence and a future life. In II, The Transcendental Doctrine of Method, Kant points towards the Highest Good as a determining ground (...) of the ultimate end of pure reason. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s distinction between the cognitive roles of sensibility and understanding raises a question concerning the conditions necessary for objective representation. I distinguish two opposing interpretive positions—viz. Intellectualism and Sensibilism. According to Intellectualism all objective representation depends, at least in part, on the unifying synthetic activity of the mind. In contrast, Sensibilism argues that at least some forms of objective representation, specifically intuitions, do not require synthesis. I argue that there are deep reasons for thinking that Intellectualism is (...) incompatible with Kant's view as expressed in the Transcendental Aesthetic. We can better see how Kant’s arguments in the first Critique may be integrated, I suggest, by examining his notion of the 'unity' [Einheit] of a representation. I articulate two distinct ways in which a representation may possess unity and claim that we can use these notions to integrate Kant’s arguments in the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction without compromising the core claims of either Sensibilism or Intellectualism—that intuition is a form of objective representation independent of synthesis, and that the kind of objective representations that ground scientific knowledge of the world require synthesis by the categories. (shrink)

The article addresses some aspects of Gava’s book, highlighting two main points: (1) the notion of philosophy in a cosmic sense; (2) its connection with the meaning of the concept of method. Regarding (1) I show how Gava’s interpretation of the systematic concept of philosophy does not account adequately for the scholastic concept. This has consequences for the notion of philosophy in a cosmic sense itself; its nature as an objective archetype and its personification in the ideal of a (...) master of wisdom are not properly emphasized. These features are closely related to Kant’s claim that philosophy cannot be learned, which is connected with Kant’s peculiar idea of method. Regarding (2), I argue that ‘method’ for Kant does not concern only the construction of scientific systems, but also the establishment of a way of thinking, a stance embracing thought and action. The meaning of the postulates and the notion of ‘faith’ thus acquire a ‘weaker’ connotation, as an attitude, habitus, aimed at the establishment and promotion of a ‘life-structuring’ rationality, and not as an alternative route to a theoretical ‘commitment’. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Møller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a (...) natural right framework. Her study shows that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity. (shrink)

Kant advertises his Critique of Pure Reason as fulfilling reason's "most difficult" task: self-knowledge. As it is carried out in the Critique, this investigation is meant to be "scientific and fully illuminating"; for Kant, this means that it must follow a proper method. Commentators writing in English have tended to dismiss Kant's claim that the Critique is the scientific expression of reason's self-knowledge---either taking it to be sheer rhetoric, or worrying that it (...) pollutes the Critique with an unfortunate residue of rationalism. As a result, there is little sustained treatment of the method of the Critique in the secondary literature. Since Kant holds that the substantive insights of critical philosophy are not separable from the methodological context in which they come to light, this is a serious mistake. My dissertation corrects for this, by approaching the Critique through an examination of its method. In doing so, it yields a reading of the Transcendental Deduction that not only promises to resolve current debates about its "proof structure", but also fully accounts for the Deduction's pivotal role in the work as a whole. (shrink)

Scholarly debates on the Critique of Pure Reason have largely been shaped by epistemological questions. Challenging this prevailing trend, Kant's Reform of Metaphysics is the first book-length study to interpret Kant's Critique in view of his efforts to turn Christian Wolff's highly influential metaphysics into a science. Karin de Boer situates Kant's pivotal work in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy, traces the development of Kant's conception of critique, and offers fresh and in-depth analyses of (...) key parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, including the Transcendental Deduction, the Schematism Chapter, the Appendix to the Transcendental Analytic, and the Architectonic. The book not only brings out the coherence of Kant's project, but also reconstructs the outline of the 'system of pure reason' for which the Critique was to pave the way, but that never saw the light. (shrink)

"Kant and the Capacity to Judge" will prove to be an important and influential event in Kant studies and in philosophy.

This article first refines the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism, and then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three contexts: the A Critique, the Prolegomena, and the B Critique. My thesis is that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and a spur toward critique. In his initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who (...) stopped short of what was really needed: a full critique of reason, to establish the boundaries of metaphysical cognition. Kant found fault with Hume's analyses of cognition and experience, and specifically his failure to see the crucial importance of synthetic a priori cognition in metaphysics. In particular, he held that Hume's empiricist account of cognition could neither explain the synthetic a priori cognition actually found in mathematics and natural science, nor provide a principled account of the limits on what can be known--and what can be thought--through the pure concepts of the understanding. According to Kant, Hume therefore failed in his attempt to determine the limits of metaphysics, whereas Kant succeeded because his transcendental philosophy provided a thorough account of cognition, its structure and limits. In the Prolegomena and the B Critique Kant distinguished his position more sharply from Hume's. He also adopted a more negative attitude toward "skeptical idealism" than before; but he attributed such skepticism to Descartes, not Hume. Prior to the B Critique Kant did not see Hume as attacking natural science or ordinary cognition. In none of the three works was Kant's main aim to "answer the skeptic." His primary aim was what he said it was: to firmly establish the boundary of metaphysics, by discovering the elements of human cognition and fixing its proper domain. His purported discoveries about the limits of metaphysical cognition meant that the traditional objects of metaphysical knowledge, God, the soul, and the world as it is in itself, are unknowable, hence that traditional metaphysics itself is impossible. Besides settling the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, his findings would also prevent the illegitimate extension of principles of sensibility to God and the noumenal self, an extension that would threaten the metaphysics of morals by incorrectly denying the thinkability of noumenal freedom, and that might otherwise lead to "materialism, fatalism, atheism, and freethinking unbelief" (B xxxiv). (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with Kant's theory of our experience of objects as presented in his Critique of Pure Reason. I begin by considering two distinct approaches that one can take in analyzing intentional experiences--i.e., experiences of or about things. I note that one may analyze such experiences either in terms of the sorts of things that we can have experience of or in terms of the sorts of experiences that we can have of things. It is (...) my claim that Kant was more concerned with the latter in the Critique, and consequently, I propose a Quinian "denominalization" of Kant's use of the expression 'appearance' . So, I argue, when Kant claims that we can only experience things as they appear and never as they are in themselves, he is saying something about how we experience things , and is not saying that the objects we experience are mere appearances, numerically distinct from things in themselves. I develop this interpretation through a detailed examination of the text, and then utilize it to make sense of some traditionally puzzling passages in the Critique. (shrink)