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8 - The Ideas of Pure Reason

from Part II - The Arguments of the Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2010

Paul Guyer
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

The beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic marks an important transition in the Critique of Pure Reason and in Kant's philosophical system as a whole. In approximately the first half of the Critique, Kant argues that we can have immanent metaphysical knowledge of synthetic a priori principles that structure all possible human experience, because they are grounded in our pure forms of intuition (space and time) and the pure concepts of our understanding (the categories). But Kant's argument for this immanent metaphysics rests on his claim that human knowledge can result only from applying concepts to intuitions, or more precisely to schemata mediating the application of concepts to appearances. This key claim implies that transcendent metaphysical knowledge - knowledge of objects that transcend the boundaries of possible human experience - is impossible for us, since it would involve deploying concepts independently of intuitions or schemata. If Kant had ended the Critique at this point, then his positive argument for an immanent metaphysics in the first half of the book would be wide open to attack from those unwilling to accept its strong negative implication that transcendent metaphysics is impossible. But as Kant was well aware, the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition that dominated German philosophy in the eighteenth century held that transcendent metaphysics is not only possible but actual.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • The Ideas of Pure Reason
  • Edited by Paul Guyer, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Kant's <I>Critique of Pure Reason</I>
  • Online publication: 28 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521883863.009
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  • The Ideas of Pure Reason
  • Edited by Paul Guyer, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Kant's <I>Critique of Pure Reason</I>
  • Online publication: 28 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521883863.009
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Ideas of Pure Reason
  • Edited by Paul Guyer, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Kant's <I>Critique of Pure Reason</I>
  • Online publication: 28 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521883863.009
Available formats
×