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two The Boundary of Phenomena and Noumena I. On the Relation of Understanding and Reason At the end of the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Kant claims that the unavoidable dialectic of pure reason deserves, in a metaphysics considered as a natural predisposition [Naturanlage], not only to be explained as an illusion that needs to be resolved, but also (if one can) as a natural institution [Naturanstalt] in accordance with its purpose—although this endeavor, as super-meritorious [überverdienstlich], cannot rightly be required of metaphysics proper.1 To explain the human tendency toward metaphysics as a “natural institution” that permits us to perform a task that “cannot rightly be required of metaphysics proper” would appear to point to the moral use of metaphysical inquiry that follows from the critique of the cosmological antinomies in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. However, since Kant terms the above provision “super-meritorious,” and so a task that stands beyond merit and duty, it would appear to point not to the inquiry into moral duty, but to the account of teleological judgment, and therefore to the pursuit of the systematic organization of scientific laws that Kant describes seven years later in the Critique of Judgment. Yet, in the above section, Kant goes on to imply that the question of reason’s “natural predisposition” for metaphysics lies not merely with morality and teleology, areas in which Kant has developed the use of metaphysical inquiry after its critique, but with the dependence of the understanding itself on “principles of reason [Vernunftprinzipien]” in its examination of experience. But in what sense can the understanding, the faculty of a priori cognition, be said to depend on “principles of reason,” on metaphysical inquiry, even after Kant has shown that metaphysics does not afford us cognition? Investigating such a role for the ideas of reason is the task at hand. The question can be stated thus: Is there a way to elucidate the dependence of the understanding on reason in a manner that responds to the metacritical charge that the structure of the critical inquiry cannot be justified? 36฀฀฀•฀฀฀KANT AND THE SUBJECT OF CRITIQUE Kant describes the ideas of reason as offering principles that afford insight into the critical examination of experience. Such principles are obviously not constitutive of experience, since reason’s interests carry it beyond all possible experience, achieving no object in its metaphysical pursuit, but Kant does call the relation of understanding and reason that such principles (Prinzipien) afford an “agreement [Übereinstimmung],”2 one, it would seem, that directs the critical examination of finite cognition.3 Kant compares the relation in which understanding and reason rest to that between sensibility and understanding; just as nature does not inhere in sensibility, but only in sensibility’s relation to the understanding , so too “a unified possible experience”4 can belong to the understanding only when the understanding is viewed in relation to reason. In this way, just as the laws of nature can be determined only in terms of the relation of sensibility and understanding, so too the unity of the understanding that explains the entirety of possible experience must be viewed in its relation to reason. What this appears to mean is that just as nature, within critical philosophy, cannot be viewed as merely sensible, since it is subordinate to the legislation of the understanding , so too the realm of the totality of possible experience that comprises nature must itself be viewed as the province of the understanding only when it is subordinate to the legislation of reason. The influence that reason exerts over the understanding, an influence, Kant writes, that “seems to be constitutive and law-giving with respect to experience ,”5 but cannot be, would appear to raise the possibility of a positive function within the Critique of Pure Reason for the transcendental dialectic. What such an account offers is the possibility of an answer to the question of how Kant is able to mark out the boundary of possible experience such that the categories of the understanding can be exhibited prior to the critique of metaphysics that these categories make possible. Or, as Kant writes earlier in the Prolegomena, in describing the relation of phenomena and noumena: “Both are considered together in our reason, and the question arises: how does reason proceed in setting boundaries for the understanding with respect to both fields?”6 Could it be that through an examination of the dependence of the account of the unity of...

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