Kant and the Claims of Knowledge

by Paul Guyer

Overview

This book offers a radically new account of the development and structure of the central arguments of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the defense of the objective validity of such categories as substance, causation, and independent existence. Paul Guyer makes far more extensive use than any other commentator of historical materials from the years leading up to the publication of the Critique and surrounding its revision, and he shows that the work which has come down to us is the result of some striking and only partially resolved theoretical tensions. Kant had originally intended to demonstrate the validity of the categories by exploiting what he called 'analogies of appearance' between the structure of self-knowledge and our knowledge of objects. The idea of a separate 'transcendental deduction', independent from the analysis of the necessary conditions of empirical judgements, arose only shortly before publication of the Critique in 1781, and distorted much of Kant's original inspiration. Part of what led Kant to present this deduction separately was his invention of a new pattern of argument - very different from the 'transcendental arguments' attributed by recent interpreters to Kant - depending on initial claims to necessary truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521337724
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/25/1987
Series:	Cambridge Paperback Library
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Notes on sources; Introduction; Part I. Kant's Early View: 1. The problem of objective validity; 2. The transcendental theory of experience: 1774–1775; Part II. The Transcendental Deduction from 1781 to 1787: 3. The real premises of the deduction; 4. The deduction from knowledge of objects; 5. The deduction and aperception; Part III. The Principles of Empirical Knowledge: 6. The schematism and system of principles; 7. Axioms and anticipations; 8. The general principle of the analogies; 9. The first analogy: substance; 10. The second analogy: causation; 11. The third analogy: interaction; Part IV. The Refutation of Idealism: 12. The problem, project, and promise of the refutation; 13. The central arguments of the refutation; 14. The metaphysics of the refutation; Part V. Transcendental Idealism: 15. Appearances and things in themselves; 16. Transcendental idealism and the forms of intuition; 17. Transcendental idealism and the theory of judgment; 18. Transcendental idealism and the 'Antinomy of Pure Reason'; Afterword; Notes; General index.