Kant on the Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason (original) (raw)
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The Demand for Systematicity and the Authority of Theoretical Reason in Kant
In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique Kant seeks to analyze and defend the regulative principle of systematic unity as the supreme principle of theoretical reason in its legitimate use. His notoriously unclear presentation of this principle has, however, left its status a source of controversy in the literature. According to one dominant interpretation, endorsed by Paul Guyer, Patricia Kitcher and others, the principle ought to be understood as a methodological device for extending and perfecting our understanding of nature. In this paper I argue that this reading is flawed. While in my view it correctly affirms that the principle is normatively directed to guiding the cognitive activity of agents, it wrongly implies that the principle binds with mere hypothetical necessity. I argue that, on the contrary, if it is accepted that reason's regulative principle is normative, then it ought to be read as binding agents categorically instead. Categorical necessity is a far stronger form of bindingness than that usually associated with the methodological reading of reason's principle, and indeed with the regulative role of theoretical reason more generally. I argue that only by attributing this strong form of necessity to theoretical reason can we make sense of Kant's critical vindication of reason as a whole, according to which it is, in all its employments, a fundamentally self-determining power.
Rethinking the Priority of Practical Reason in Kant
Throughout the critical period Kant enigmatically insists that reason is a 'unity', thereby suggesting that both our theoretical and practical endeavors are grounded in one and the same rational capacity.
The Unity of Kant's Practical Philosophy
The Unity of Kant’s Practical Philosophy, in: Beatrix Himmelmann and Camilla Serck-Hanssen (eds.), The Court of Reason. Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, Berlin: de Gruyter 2021, pp. 1843-1852., 2021
This paper argues that Kant’s ethics and Kant’s philosophy of right are linked by a common normative idea. I argue that we find in Kant’s exposition of the basic normative principles in the Groundwork the resources for grounding his philosophy of right. More specifically, my point is that Kant’s conception of a realm of ends, as he develops it in the Groundwork, provides a common normative source for Kant’s ethical Categorical Imperatives, on the one hand, and the Universal Principle of Right, on the other. The agreement on common universal principles, as it is crucial for Kant’s notion of a realm of ends, yields, so my claim, a justification of the ethical Categorical Imperatives and the Universal Principle of Right. I develop this agreement-based justification in the form of a transcendental argument, thus aiming to show that it squares with Kant’s methodological approach in the Groundwork.
Priority of Practical Reason in Kant
European Journal of Philosophy, 2013
Throughout the critical period Kant enigmatically insists that reason is a ‘unity’, thereby suggesting that both our theoretical and practical endeavors are grounded in one and the same rational capacity. How Kant's unity thesis ought to be interpreted and whether it can be substantiated remain sources of controversy in the literature. According to the strong reading of this claim, reason is a ‘unity’ because all our reasoning, including our theoretical reasoning, functions practically. Although several prominent commentators endorse this view, it is widely thought to lack exegetical support. This paper seeks to strengthen the case for this reading by showing how theoretical reason's positive function, as Kant presents it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, may be construed as fundamentally practical. I argue that reason's supreme regulative principle ought to be understood as a categorical practical imperative. This interpretation, I suggest, resolves the apparent inconsistencies that blight Kant's account of the principle in the Appendix, while bringing greater overall coherence to his account of theoretical reason's regulative function.
Kant's Response to the Principle of Sufficient Reason
Despite vehement statements in the First Critique rejecting the PSR as a principle of judgment, Kant was actually more sympathetic to the PSR than these passages alone would suggest. While Kant denies that the PSR can guide metaphysical reasoning, he actually supposes its truth. This position is tenable because, like the rationalists, Kant accepts the assumption that real essences exist and that they are intelligible; this leads him to accept the truth of all clear statements of the PSR. Unlike the rationalists, however, he does not accept the assumption that human understanding is isomorphic with real essences. As a result, Kant rejects only the use of the PSR to determine a priori the existence or properties of a thing. In this paper I hope to illuminate this position. I will begin with a survey of the various formulations of the PSR used by Kant and his predecessors: Leibniz, Eberhard, and Wolff. Then I will examine Wolff and Eberhard’s arguments in favor of the PSR along with Kant’s criticisms of these arguments. Lastly, I will show why Kant rejected the very possibility of justifying this use of the PSR while supposing its truth.
eprints.lse.ac.uk
This essay explores the relationship between the practical interest of reason and the theoretical demand for systematic unity as it emerges in the Critique of Pure Reason. It focuses in particular on the two definitions of philosophy that Kant discusses in the Architectonic of Pure Reason: the scholastic definition and the cosmic one. It argues that, in a way similar to the Critique of Judgement, Kant here attempts to identify in the concept of teleology a bridge between the theoretical and the practical interests of reason. It further illustrates how Kant’s inability to identify a separate “domain” for the exercise of the principles of practical reason in the first Critique complicates this task and leads to an ambiguous defence of the unity of the system, culminating in a final and rather uncritical endorsement of natural teleology. This shows that contrary to what constructivist interpretations have traditionally maintained, Kant’s first Critique did not succeed in the complete abandonment of rationalist metaphysics. On the contrary it may have ended up offering one of its most subtle interpretations.
The Place and Meaning of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) in the legacy of Western philosophy
South African Journal of Philosophy, 1982
Kant's Critique of pure reason (1781) represents an important turning-point in the development of modern philosophy. Before Kant we see the rise of the ideal of the autonomous personality which used, in order to proclaim its freedom, natural science as an instrument to dominate nature. Indeed, Kant tried to consolidate and strengthen the preceding natural science-ideal, but in the restricted form of the rationalistically elevated understanding which-though limited to sensibility in order to save a separate super-sensory domain for the practical-ethical freedom of autonomous manis considered to be the a priori (formal) lawgiver of nature. The nominalistic roots of this conception are seen from the fact that he did not merely transpose the universal side of entities into human understanding, since he actually elevated human understanding to the level of the conditioning order for things: 'understanding creates its (a priori) laws not out of nature, but prescribes them to nature.' Systematic distinctions drawn by Kant are repeatedly related to their historical roots and evaluated by means of immanent criticism (for example in connection with the problems of his Transcendental Dialectics). The influence of this work is mentioned with reference to some philosophical trends and some special sciences (sociology and mathematics). In conclusion a critical appraisal is given of the opposition between analysis and synthesis.
Rethinking Kant's Fact of Reason
Philosophers' Imprint, 2014
Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason is one of the most perplexing aspects of his moral philosophy. The aim of this paper is to defend Kant’s doctrine from the common charge of dogmatism. My defense turns on a previously unexplored analogy to the notion of ‘matters of fact’ popularized by members of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. In their work, ‘facts’ were beyond doubt, often referring to experimental effects one could witness first hand. While Kant uses the German equivalent in different contexts, I argue that the scientific analogy opens up a new framework for interpreting his strategy of justification in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the final section, I address a few possible objections to my reading, one of which I anticipate coming from Dieter Henrich and Ian Proops, who have argued that Kant’s Fact of Reason is best understood under a legal analogy.