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The Divorce of Reason and Experience: Kant's Paralogisms of Pure Reason in Context
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 47, Number 2, April 2009
- pp. 249-275
- 10.1353/hph.0.0115
- Article
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I consider Kant's criticism of rational psychology in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason in light of his German predecessors. I first present Wolff's foundational account of metaphysical psychology with the result that Wolff's rational psychology is not comfortably characterized as a naïvely rationalist psychology. I then turn to the reception of Wolff's account among later German metaphysicians, and show that the same claim of a dependence of rational upon empirical psychology is found in the publications and lectures of Kant's pre-Critical period. Considering the Paralogisms in this context reveals Kant's conception of rational psychology to be distinctly novel and has important consequences in shifting the argumentative focus of the chapter.