Kant's Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical-Historical Commentary by Henry E. Allison

Author:Henry E. Allison [Allison, Henry E.]
Language: eng
Format: azw
ISBN: 9780198724865
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

1 Strawson (1966), 32.

2 This point is noted by Carl (1992), 45.

3 Kant obviously does not understand “synopsis” in its contemporary sense; viz., as the summary of a plot or abstract of an argument. Rather, he evidently takes it in its original Greek sense (syn-horan) as a seeing together or at once. But since he connects it with the senses, and therefore regards it as passive, it must be contrasted with seeing a multiplicity of items as in some sense belonging or fitting together to constitute a whole of some sort, which for Kant requires a synthesis.

4 For a clear statement of the non-psychological nature of Kant’s claims in the “subjective side” of the Transcendental Deduction and critique of some of the older commentators who read Kant in this way, specifically Erdmann and de Vleeschauwer, see Carl (1992), 52.

5 The contemporary commentators whom I have in mind prominently include Kitcher (1990 and 2011) and Brook (1994). For my discussion of Kitcher’s view in her earlier work see Allison (1996), 53–66.

6 Among the variety of ways in which Kant uses the term “transcendental” two stand out as fundamental. One is the “critical” or epistemological sense, as in the definitions considered above, in which it refers to a second-order investigation. The other is the traditional sense, discussed in earlier chapters, in which it refers to a consideration of things or objects in general or as such, in which case transcendental philosophy is ontology or metaphysica generalis. I discuss these two senses of the term with respect to the contrast between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism in Allison (2012), 67–83.

7 See also A56–7/B80–1.

8 The difference between these formulations and their implications for understanding the shift in Kant’s views between the first and second editions of the Critique has been analyzed at length by Pinder (1986). I discuss Pinder’s account in Allison (2012), 70, note 6.

9 This may help to explain Kant’s keenness in gaining the support for the Critique of Mendelssohn, Tetens, and Garve, who were arguably the leading representatives of these orientations in Germany.

10 Although Kant initially suggests that his characterization holds of any a priori concept, his failure to mention mathematical concepts and his account of the conditions that such a concept must meet indicate that he is here interested merely in pure concepts of the understanding.

11 We saw in Chapter 2 that in Dreams Kant equated the concept of spirit with that of an immaterial substance, which indicates that what it omits is materiality, which for the “critical” Kant is a necessary condition of the real use of the concept of substance. And the concept of God is transcendent in the technical sense that it requires us to go beyond the bounds of a possible experience.

12 For what Kant understands by a synopsis see note 3.

13 At A120 Kant claims that every appearance contains a manifold; but since by “appearance” Kant understands the “undetermined object of an empirical intuition,” these are equivalent.

14 See, for example, A120, B160, A161/B202, and A167/B209. We saw that apprehension was already a central topic in the Duisburg Nachlass.

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