The Architectonic of Reason by Lea Ypi;

Author:Lea Ypi; [Ypi, Lea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191065422
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2021-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

6. Logical and Transcendental Principles

What kind of principle then grounds the hypothetical use of reason? It is interesting to note how Kant barely mentions it explicitly, with the exception of the concluding paragraphs of the Doctrine of Elements, when he introduces the idea of a Final end of the natural dialectic of human reason. Kant’s caution here reveals the complexity of the problem he is trying to solve: an issue that looms in the background of the systematic task of the Architectonic and of the unity of theoretical and practical reason. The basis for the systematic principle of the hypothetical use of reason is a universal that is problematically accepted, a ‘projected’ unity which helps to find ‘a principle (Principium) for the manifold and particular uses of the understanding thereby guiding it even in those cases that are not given and making it coherently connected’ (KrV, A 647, 675; 593).

Kant explains here that the hypothetical use of reason has no constitutive validity; it is not such that the truth of the universal rule assumed as hypothesis necessarily follows (KrV, A 647, B 675; 592). In this sense, the principle of systematic unity required is merely a logical principle necessary to help ideas proceed where the understanding is stuck, i.e., when systematically connecting the manifold of its rules ‘under one principle’. The logical idea of complete unity of cognitions is necessary because the categories of the understanding leave entirely indeterminate how to think coherently about the unity of its rules, and because the latter are essential to think coherently about experience in its complexity, including its contingent complexity.

Kant also explains that such a logical principle of the systematic unity of experience should not be confused with a transcendental principle. The former is subjective and methodological, the latter is objective and ontological. Indeed, as Kant argues, if we say that ‘the constitution of objects or the nature of the understanding that cognizes them as such are in themselves determined to systematic unity’ and if we say that one could ‘postulate this a priori without taking into account such an interest of reason, and therefore say possible cognitions of the understanding (including empirical ones) have the unity of reason, and stand under common principles from which they could be derived despite their variety’, this would entail ‘a transcendental principle of reason’. A transcendental principle, unlike a logical one, would make systematic unity ‘not merely something subjectively and logically necessary, as method, but objectively necessary’ (KrV, A 648; B 676; 593).

On a superficial reading, Kant’s distinction between subjective and objective necessity for systematicity suggests a rather dismissive take on the value and plausibility of transcendental principles for the systematic unity of experience. However, Kant’s position here is more nuanced. Interpreters who read these pages as either anticipating the third Critique or adding very little to the methodological discussion of the role of ideas based on logical principles both miss the mark. As is well known, in the Critique of Judgment a transcendental principle of purposiveness is at the heart of the search for systematic unity also from a logical point of view.

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