file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason ▪ Sebastian Gardner -iii- First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Reprinted 2000 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 1999 Sebastian Gardner Typeset in Times and Frutiger by The Florence Group, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm (1 of 318)7/10/2006 12:32:44 μμ file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of pure reason / Sebastian Gardner. p. cm. - (Routledge philosophy guidebooks) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 2. Knowledge, Theory of. 3. Causation. 4. Reason. I. Title. II. Series. B2779.G27 1999 98-42339 121-dc 21 ISBN 0-415-11908-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-11909-X (pbk) -iv- For my mother, Jude, Euan and Benedict, Emma, Bobby and Jade -v- file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm (2 of 318)7/10/2006 12:32:44 μμ file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm We do not deny that the Kantian solution is extremely subtle and is perhaps balanced on the point of a needle, but who would believe that a solution to this problem could be found which was not alarmingly subtle? (Gottfried Martin) Transcendental idealism arises in general through a direct inversion of previous modes of philosophical explanation. (F. W. J. von Schelling) -vi- Contents Preface xi 1 The problem of metaphysics 1 Historical background: the Enlightenment and its problems 2 Kant’s life 9 Kant’s pre-Critical vacillation: the indispensable dreams of metaphysics 13 Is metaphysics possible? (The Preface) 20 The structure of the Critique 25 2 The possibility of objects 27 The Critical problem: Kant’s letter to Herz 27 Interpretations of Kant: analytic and idealist 30 The problem of reality 33 Kant’s Copernican revolution 37 3 How are synthetic a priori judgements possible? (The Introduction) 51 Kant’s logical formulation of the problem of metaphysics 51 Synthetic apriority: objections and replies 58 -vii- file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm (3 of 318)7/10/2006 12:32:44 μμ file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm 4 The sensible conditions of objects (The Aesthetic) 65 Kant’s analysis of cognition 66 The sensible form of experience: space and time 70 Space and time as a priori intuitions: Kant’s arguments 75 Space and time in the Analytic 84 5 Transcendental idealism 87 The doctrine of transcendental idealism 88 The distinctiveness of transcendental idealism 96 Kant’s ontological denial 99 The argument for transcendental idealism in the Aesthetic 101 Trendelenburg’s alternative 107 The argument for transcendental idealism in the Antinomy 111 6 The conceptual conditions of objects (The Analytic) 115 The argument of the Analytic: questions of method 115 The relation of thought to objects: the apriority of conceptual form (Idea of a Transcendental Logic) 125 The elements of thought: the categories (The Clue to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts of the Understanding) 131 The preconditions and source of conceptual form: the subject-object relation (The Transcendental Deduction) 135 The specific conceptual form of human experience: causally interacting substances (The Schematism, The Analogies, The Refutation of Idealism) 165 Transcendental arguments, transcendental idealism and Kant’s reply to the skeptic 188 Measurement and modality (The Axioms of Intuition, The Anticipations of Perception, The Postulates of Empirical Thought) 196 -viii- Transcendent objects: the concept of noumenon (The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in general into Phenomena and Noumena) 198 Kant’s critique of Leibniz’s method (The Amphiboly) 206 7 Unknowable objects (The Dialectic) 209 Beyond the land of truth 209 Transcendental illusion: reason’s ideas of the unconditioned 214 Reason as regulative (The Appendix to the Dialectic) 221 The dialectical inferences of transcendent metaphysics (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy, The Ideal of Pure Reason) 225 Transcendental idealism in the Dialectic I: the dissolution of theoretical reason’s contradictions (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy) 243 Transcendental idealism in the Dialectic II: the problematic intelligible world (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy, The Ideal of Pure Reason) 255 file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm (4 of 318)7/10/2006 12:32:44 μμ file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm Kant’s destructive achievement 267 8 The meaning of transcendental idealism 269 Kant’s empirical realism: the nature of appearance 271 The existence of things in themselves 280 Things in themselves and appearances 289 The transcendental ideality of the self 298 Entering into, and remaining within, the Kantian system 303 9 The complete Critical system (The Canon of Pure Reason) 307 ‘What ought I to do?’ The moral law 308 ‘What may I hope?’ From morality to God 315 The unity and ends of Reason 319 -ix- 10 The reception and influence of the Critique 327 The immediate reception of the Critique 328 Absolute idealism: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel 331 Schopenhauer 341 Kant and twentieth-century philosophy 342 Bibliography 349 Index 365 -x- Preface Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason (henceforth Critique) in two editions, and there are substantial differences between them. They are interlaced in the translation by N. Kemp Smith (2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1933), where the ‘A’ numbering in the margin refers to the first edition and the ‘B’ numbering to the second, corresponding to the pagination of the German originals. Quotations in this book are taken from this edition, which has hitherto been standardly employed in English-language Kant commentary. Two new translations of the Critique have appeared very recently, the one by W. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), the other by P. Guyer and A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). References are also made in this book to Kant’s Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (Proleg) (trans. J. Ellington, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), Critique of Practical Reason (CPracR) and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Gr) (trans. and ed. M. Gregor, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Critique of Judgement (CJ) (trans. file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm (5 of 318)7/10/2006 12:32:44 μμ file:///J|/1MyPhilEbooks/2Ξ•νοι Φιλ•σοφοι/Kant/Routledge Companion to The Critique of Pure reason/htm.htm W. Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987) and his Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99 (ed. and trans. A. Zweig, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Where material from these works is quoted, it is taken -xi- from these editions, and all references are to the marginal pagination. The standard edition of Kant’s works in German is the Prussian Academy edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Georg Reimer, subsequently Walter de Gruyter, 1900-). References to this work are given in the form Ak followed by volume number and page number. Regarding Kantian terms such as ‘First Analogy’, ‘fourth paralogism’, capitals are used when referring to a section of the Critique, and lower case when referring to the argument given or discussed there. It cannot be pretended that the prose of the Critique - its ‘colourless, dry, packing-paper style’ and ‘stiff, abstract form’, as the poet Heinrich Heine put it - has many immediate attractions. Kant himself was acutely conscious of the work’s literary limitations, and excused it on the grounds that what it contains requires quite special technical expression. Kant’s philosophical vocabulary is baroque and unfamiliar. It does not strictly consist of neologisms, because the terms Kant employs are drawn from earlier philosophical sources and other (mathematical, juridical) quarters, but their meaning cannot be sought outside Kant’s texts. The only remedy for the difficulty presented by the style and terminology of the Critique is repeated exposure. I should at the outset say something about the approach to Kant taken in this book, if only so that readers unfamiliar with the Critique and commentary on it should be made aware of how it differs from some of the many other approaches which may be taken. The book reflects work, most of it in the last two decades, on Kant’s theoretical philosophy by Henry Allison, Karl Ameriks, Richard Aquila, Ermanno Bencivenga, Graham Bird, Gerd Buchdahl, Dieter Henrich, Arthur Melnick, Robert Pippin, Ralph Walker, Wayne Waxman and others. These writers do not express a single view of Kant by any means, but they share an outlook to the extent of agreeing that Kant’s metaphysic of transcendental idealism is far from being a mere curiosity in the history of philosophy and is instead (at the very least) a highly interesting philosophical project.