In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

five The Paralogisms of Pure Reason: In Search of a Regulative Principle for Transcendental Reflection I. The Faculty of Thinking (Axvii) In the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, in what stands as the opening salvo of critical philosophy, Kant writes that although questions concerning “the faculty of thinking [das Vermögen zu denken]”—the mind, or reason, in the broadest and most undifferentiated sense—are important , they are not an essential part of the Transcendental Deduction, nor are they necessary for inquiry into the “faculty we call the understanding, and at the same time for the determination of the rules and boundaries of its use” (Axvi).1 What is central to the Transcendental Deduction is the demonstration of the objective validity of the categories of the understanding; and while one could also trace these categories and the faculty of understanding that they constitute back to their source, to the “faculty of thinking” itself, from out of which they have been distinguished, this latter task, which Kant describes as subjective, does not belong “essentially” to the Transcendental Deduction. Kant thus distinguishes two aspects of the Transcendental Deduction: the objective interest in the deduction of the categories of the understanding as the conditions that permit objects of experience, and the subjective interest that attempts to examine the intellectual capacities that provide such objective cognition. While such interests obviously overlap, it is the objective that designates the conditions that permit objectively valid judgments—rather than the subjective, which delves into the “faculties of cognition [Erkenntnisvermögen]” (Axvii) on which these conditions rest—that are essential for the Transcendental Deduction. In both the first- and second-edition versions of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant proves that the a priori concepts of the understanding are a necessary condition of the experience of objects. And while the first edition’s version emphasizes the imagination and the threefold synthesis that offers the subjective source of cognition, as opposed to that of the second edition with its emphasis on the role of the understanding in the production of objectivity, THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON฀฀฀•฀฀฀125 Kant explains in the first edition’s preface that the success, even of the original Deduction, depends not on the emphasis on the psychological or subjective elements of cognition, but on the role of the understanding in cognition, and so on the objective side of the Deduction (Axvii). The investigation of the understanding insofar as it conditions the possibility of objects advances in the Transcendental Analytic without the more general inquiry into the cognitive structure of rational beings, and thus without a clear explanation of the relation of the faculty of understanding to thinking in general, which is to say to that of reason in its broadest sense, of which it is a part. Kant initially directs an investigation of the dependence of objects of experience on the categories of the understanding, setting aside questions that concern themselves with the understanding as a faculty distinguished within the more general account of the faculty of thinking. Kant writes: “the chief question always remains: ‘What and how much can understanding and reason cognize free of all experience?’ and not: ‘How is the faculty of thinking itself possible?’” (Axvii). But does this mean that Kant has begun the critical project by denying the need to investigate the particular mode of thought of the human subject, limiting himself to a conception of the understanding as the locus of the categories which condition the possibility of objects and denying the need to justify this designation of the philosophical terrain by connecting the analysis of the understanding to that of the broader capacities of thought? Or, does this emphasis on the objective and not the subjective side of the Deduction, and so on the categories of the understanding rather than on the relation of the understanding to thought in general, even in the first edition, merely begin the critical project, offering an entry into a discussion of the cognitive faculties that will ultimately proceed beyond the understanding to questions concerning the conception of human thinking from out of which it has been carved? It is obviously the latter question that animates my interpretation of the critical project. This is to say that the limited epistemological inquiry in the Transcendental Analytic, that of not only the objective side of the Transcendental Deduction, but also the subjective side initiated in the first edition, must be understood within the context of Kant’s attempt to orient philosophy...

Share