Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant
Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or "comprehension"). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.
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Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant
Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or "comprehension"). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.
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Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant

Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant

by Karl Schafer
Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant
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Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant

Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant

by Karl Schafer

Overview

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or "comprehension"). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780192868534
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 11/22/2023
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 9.00(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Karl Schafer, University of Texas at Austin

Karl Schafer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he served as Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Irvine and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also been a Lawrence S. Rockefeller Faculty Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, a Humboldt Fellow at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellow with the ACLS/Mellon Foundation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Unity of Reason in Kant and TodayPart One: Kant s Rational Constitutivism1. Transcendental Philosophy and the Self-Consciousness of Reason2. Cognition, Self-Consciousness, and the Taking Condition3. Kant's Rational ConstitutivismPart Two: Reason and its Unity4. Reason: The Capacity for Comprehension5. Theoretical Reason's Supreme Principle and the Principle of Sufficient Reason6. Practical Reason's Supreme Principle, the Moral Law, and the Highest Good7. The Autonomy of Reason and the Capacity for AutonomyConclusion: Reason, Reasons, and the Future of the Critical ProjectAppendix: Alternative Accounts of Cognition
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