Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic Revisited
Abstract
This paper provides a novel reconstruction of Kant’s argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. This reconstruction relies on two main contentions: first, that Kant accepts the then-ubiquitous view that all cognition is either from grounds or consequences, a view he props up by drawing a distinction between logical and real grounds; second, that Kant, like most of his contemporaries, holds that our representations are the most immediate grounds of our cognition. By stressing these elements, the most threatening objection to Kant’s argument can be avoided, namely, the claim that Kant ignores the possibility that our representations of space and time are subjective in origin, but objective as regards their applicability. My reconstruction shows that this so-called neglected alternative objection is based on a conceptual confusion about the nature of a priori cognition.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Temperance and Epistemic Purity in Plato’s Phaedo
- Categories in Topics I 9: A New Plea For a Traditional Interpretation
- Aristotle’s First Moves Regarding Perception: A Reading of (most of) De Anima 2.5
- Kant on Civil Self-Sufficiency
- Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic Revisited
- Life, Lawfulness, and Contingency: Kant and Schelling on Organic Nature
- Book Reviews
- Muratori, Cecilia. Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence. Cambridge: Legenda 2020, xiv + 276 pp.
- Abazari, Arash. Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, xvii + 218 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Temperance and Epistemic Purity in Plato’s Phaedo
- Categories in Topics I 9: A New Plea For a Traditional Interpretation
- Aristotle’s First Moves Regarding Perception: A Reading of (most of) De Anima 2.5
- Kant on Civil Self-Sufficiency
- Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic Revisited
- Life, Lawfulness, and Contingency: Kant and Schelling on Organic Nature
- Book Reviews
- Muratori, Cecilia. Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence. Cambridge: Legenda 2020, xiv + 276 pp.
- Abazari, Arash. Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, xvii + 218 pp.
