Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:40:18.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Idea of the Systematic Unity of Nature as a Transcendental Illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2011

Mark Pickering
Mark Pickering
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique is notorious for two reasons. First, it appears to contradict itself in saying that the idea of the systematic unity of nature is and is not transcendental. Second, in the passages in which Kant appears to espouse the former alternative, he appears to be making a significant amendment to his account of the conditions of the possibility of experience in the Transcendental Analytic. I propose a solution to both of these difficulties. With regard to the first, I argue that Kant does not contradict himself. With regard to the second, I argue that Kant is not making any change to his view of the conditions of the possibility of experience espoused in the Transcendental Analytic. The underlying cause of these apparent problems is also their solution: the transcendental illusion that nature is necessarily systematic.

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 28 September 2011 , pp. 429 - 448
Copyright
copyright © Kantian Review 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, Henry (2000) ‘Is the Critique of Judgement “Post-Critical”?’. In Sally Sedgwick (ed.), The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 78–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allison, Henry (2004) Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Rev. edn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandt, Reinhard (1989) ‘The Deductions in the Critique of Judgement: Comments on Hampshire and Horstmann’. In Eckhard Förster (ed.), Kant's Transcendental Deductions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Buchdahl, Gerd (1969) Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Geiger, Ido (2003) ‘Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?’. Kant-Studien, 94, 273–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginsborg, Hannah (1990) The Role of Taste in Kant's Theory of Cognition. New York and London: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Hannah (2008) ‘Was Kant a Nonconceptualist?’. Philosophical Studies, 137, 65–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Nathaniel (2004) ‘Do Principles of Reason have Objective But Indeterminate Validity?’. Kant-Studien, 95, 404–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grier, Michelle (2001) Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1990) ‘Reason and Reflective Judgement: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity’. Noûs, 24, 17–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2003) ‘Kant on the Systematicity of Nature: Two Puzzles’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20, 277–295.Google Scholar
Hanna, Robert (2005) ‘Kant and Nonconceptual Content’. European Journal of Philosophy, 13, 247–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1923) Kant's Werke, 23 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1968) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Meiner.Google Scholar
Kemp Smith, Norman (1962) A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. 2nd edn. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1986) ‘Projecting the Order of Nature’. In Robert E. Butts (ed.), Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 201–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (1998) Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Trans. Charles T. Wolfe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Ralph (1982) Kant. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar