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
8 - The Ideas 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
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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- The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , pp. 190 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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