The Duisburg Nachlaß

This chapter explores the so-called ‘Duisburg Nachlaß’, a set of sketches in Kant’s hand from the mid-1770s that may be understood as the ancestor of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique. The chapter has two parts. The first explores a central claim in the Duisburg Nachlaß that we know an object a priori only according to its relations by means of an ‘exposition of appearances’. The question is what does this mean? The strategy is to confront the claim with some of Kant’s metaphysical commitments from the 1750s about relations and his engagement with the regimentation of proofs in classical geometry (with a special focus on the ‘ekthesis’). The second part of the chapter uses what is learned from the first part to argue that the exposition of appearances in the Duisburg Nachlaß is meant to yield a cosmology of experience. The author uses the findings of this chapter later in the book to illuminate peculiarities and insights of the Transcendental Deduction.

Cartography and Autobiography

This chapter completes the examination, started in Chapter Four, of the second half of the Transcendental Deduction, as found in the second edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The focus of this chapter is §24 and §25. The special problem of these sections is empirical self-knowledge. The author argues that Kant treats self-knowledge as a special case of the cosmology of experience: the problem is how I situate myself in the empirical world. The solution to the problem is to build up in thought an understanding of the world by legislating universal laws to nature by means of the categories and to map my geographical and historical place in the world by means of the cartographic resources available to the productive imagination. The chapter has two parts. The first part is devoted to a paradox Kant claims to be associated with self-affection. It tries to understand his claim as a reflection on his own views in the mid-1770s about self-apprehension by inner sense and apperception. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the specialized cartography Kant takes to be involved in empirical self-knowledge and considers how Kant distinguishes between biography and autobiography.

The Transcendental Deduction Gets Underway

This chapter is in three parts. The first part considers the aim of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, as presented in the second edition of the Critique. It claims programmatically that the aim of §15 to §20 is to disclose the necessary conditions of thinking, while that of the remaining sections—culminating in §26—is to show that these conditions make thinking possible insofar as they lay the foundation of a cosmology of experience. The second part of the chapter opens a two-chapter long study of Kant’s account of thinking and its conditions in the B-Deduction. It examines §15 and §16 of the B-Deduction and attempts to clarify Kant’s statement of the supreme principle of all human knowledge: the manifold of given representations must be brought under the synthetic unity of pure apperception. The third part of the chapter focuses on §17 and Kant’s conception of the relation between knowledge and its object. It compares and contrasts this conception with its counterpart in the Duisburg Nachlaß. It argues that §17 of the B-Deduction tries to correct the dubious idealism implied by the counterpart conception of the Duisburg Nachlaß.

Conclusion

The author considers in the conclusion to this book the relationship between the Transcendental Deduction and the System of Principles—especially the Analogies of Experience—in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The final question raised by the book and addressed in the conclusion is what are the laws of nature treated in §26 of the B-Deduction as essential to any cosmology of experience. Kant says in §26 that these laws are laid down by the categories. But the conclusion of this book argues that not all categories are legislators: only the relational categories are.Hence the cosmology of experience announced in §26 is completed by the Analogies of Experience. The author then considers the question raised by this result: what claim do the non-relational categories have to be covered by the Transcendental Deduction? The answer depends on the assistance they give to the relational categories in mounting a cosmology of experience.

A Cosmology of Experience

This chapter begins a two-chapter examination of the second half of the B-Deduction. This chapter has a special focus on §26. It has three parts. The first argues that Kant completes the Deduction in §26 with a cosmology of experience. It advances this argument in part by reading §26 in light of §36 of the Prolegomena. The second part examines the role and significance of image-making and the productive imagination for the cosmology of experience. It argues that, for Kant, they make possible cartography of the sensible world and that, without such cartography, no cosmology of experience and hence no thinking as such is possible. The third part of the chapter completes the examination of §26 by considering the role of universal laws of nature in a cosmology of experience and hence thinking as such. It argues that Kant’s treatment of universal laws and image-making in §26 tries to make good on his reflections in the Duisburg Nachlaß on the ‘ekthesis’ in a proof of classical geometry.

§18 and §19 of the B-Deduction

This chapter completes the two-chapter long investigation of the account in the B-Deduction of the conditions of thinking as such. It examines §18 and §19. It has three parts. It devotes the first part to §18 and argues that Kant there takes concepts and understanding to be essential to the association of ideas. It devotes the second part to §19 and argues that §19 tries to address a question raised by §18: what is the difference between the association of ideas and judgement? The answer depends on the synthetic unity of apperception and its intimate relation to the categories taken to be logical functions of the understanding. The third part of the chapter shows how Kant uses §18 and §19 in §20 of the B-Deduction to disclose the conditions of thinking.

Introduction

This book undertakes a study of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason—‘a somewhat deep-seated reflection’,1 as Kant characterizes it in the preface to the first edition (AXVI). Such studies have been undertaken before, but I believe I can shed new light on the argument. I might justify my claim by saying that I have taken account of Kant’s earlier writings—and not only those published in his lifetime. That is at least part of what is distinctive about my study. But other people have done so too, and contributed much to our understanding of the text. A notable example is Hermann de Vleeschauwer’s three volume book, ...