Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Background to the Critique
- Part II The Arguments of the Critique
- 3 The Introduction to the Critique: Framing the Question
- 4 The Transcendental Aesthetic
- 5 The Deduction of the Categories: The Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions
- 6 The System of Principles
- 7 The Refutation of Idealism and the Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena
- 8 The Ideas of Pure Reason
- 9 The Paralogisms of Pure Reason
- 10 The Antinomies of Pure Reason
- 11 The Ideal of Pure Reason
- 12 The Appendix to the Dialectic and the Canon of Pure Reason: The Positive Role of Reason
- 13 The Transcendental Doctrine of Method
- Part III The Impact of the Critique
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - The Ideal of Pure Reason
from Part II - The Arguments of the Critique
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Background to the Critique
- Part II The Arguments of the Critique
- 3 The Introduction to the Critique: Framing the Question
- 4 The Transcendental Aesthetic
- 5 The Deduction of the Categories: The Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions
- 6 The System of Principles
- 7 The Refutation of Idealism and the Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena
- 8 The Ideas of Pure Reason
- 9 The Paralogisms of Pure Reason
- 10 The Antinomies of Pure Reason
- 11 The Ideal of Pure Reason
- 12 The Appendix to the Dialectic and the Canon of Pure Reason: The Positive Role of Reason
- 13 The Transcendental Doctrine of Method
- Part III The Impact of the Critique
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Discussions of the “Ideal of Pure Reason” in the Transcendental Dialectic often focus on Kant's rejection of the three types of argument traditionally offered in support of the existence of God (the so-called “ontological,” “cosmological” and “physico-theological proofs”). Kant's critique of these arguments, however, is prefaced by two very dense preliminary sections, the purpose of which is evidently to illuminate the “grounds of proof of speculative reason for inferring the existence of a highest being” (A 584/B 612). I am referring here to Sections 2 and 3 in the Ideal (A 572/B 600-A 590/B 618). Kant's prefatory discussions in these two sections appear to be designed to accomplish two distinct things. First, in Section 2, Kant wants to demonstrate the rational necessity of the idea of the ens realissimum. This idea, as we shall see, is said to be philosophically necessitated by our need to represent the “necessary thoroughgoing determination of things” (A 578/B 606). Second, Kant wants to account for what he takes to be an inevitable confluence of the idea of the ens realissimum with that of a necessary being. Because Sections 2 and 3 seem to be offering two distinct accounts of the origin of the idea of God, some have suggested that Kant was simply confused or uncertain about the basis for the idea of rational theology.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , pp. 266 - 289Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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