Apperception, Knowledge, and Experience

Contents

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Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-x

Some of the material in chapter 1 appeared in different form in Kant-Studien 68 (1977) 383-403 and 69 (1978) 288-298 and in The International Philosophical Quarterly 7 (September 1968). Some of the material in chapter 2 appeared in quite different form in The Personalist (July 1977) 261-276 and The Philosophical Forum 13 (Summer 1982) 326-341....

Introduction

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pp. 1-6

In "Averroes' Search" Borges imaginatively reconstructs the effort of the greatest of the Western Muslim philosophers to deal with the Poetics of Aristotle.¹ Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle were a powerful influence on Scholasticism, which means, of course, on the history of Western philosophy in general. But Averroes was dealing with an Aristotle in translation, an Aristotle, in fact, twice removed from Arabic, for Aristotle was first translated ...

CHAPTER 1. Kant's Transcendental Problematic

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pp. 7-66

A traditional way of introducing Kant to an audience somewhat familiar with the history of philosophy is to view him as attempting to synthesize the primary insights of Continental rationalism and British empiricism. Although this approach tends to downplay Kant's genuine originality as a thinker, its virtue lies in the ready access it provides to many of the more ...

CHAPTER 2. The Closure of Kant's Problematic: Idealism

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pp. 67-112

Kant's central thesis is that the mind structures the sensible manifold, which is given to us under the a priori forms of space and time, into a public world of objects by synthesizing that manifold according to certain a priori rules. This thesis is supposed to defeat scepticism by providing a body of a priori laws that govern the structure of experience. These ...

CHAPTER 3. The Closure of Kant's Problematic: Phenomenology

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pp. 113-178

Kant undertook the transcendental turn in philosophy to counter the scepticism of Hume; that is, he sought to provide an explanation of how it is possible to have knowledge that is both necessary and objective. Since knowledge derived from experience can never claim necessity, Kant concludes that such knowledge must be transcendental in origin. His ...

CHAPTER 4. Discontinuity and Coherence

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pp. 179-230

We have been reading certain developments in German philosophy as an attempt to close the gap between Kant's transcendental apparatus and the world to which that apparatus gives order and coherence. We have seen, however, that none of the developments under consideration has been able to provide a completely transcendental or a priori account of ...

Epilogue

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pp. 231-234

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover ...

Index

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pp. 235-245