Making Sense of Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason”: A Philosophical Introduction

205 Pages·2022·3.797 MB·English

by  Michael Pendlebury

Making Sense of
Kant’s “Critique
of Pure Reason”
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY:
Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” by James Luchte
Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgement,” by Fiona Hughes
Kant’s Humorous Writings, by Robert R. Clewis
The Bloomsbury Companion to Kant, edited by Gary Banham,
Dennis Schulting and Nigel Hems
Making Sense of
Kant’s “Critique
of Pure Reason”
A Philosophical Introduction
Michael Pendlebury
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CONTENTS
Preface viii
How to Use This Book xiii
Note on Citations of and Quotations from Kant’s Works xv
1 Background 1
1.1 The Basic Structure of Our World 1
1.2 Knowledge and Reality 4
1.3 The Critique of Pure Reason 6
2 The Preface and the Introduction: Two Types of
Metaphysics 11
2.1 A Science of Metaphysics? (Bvii–xxxi) 11
2.2 A Priori Cognition (B1–10) 15
2.3 The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction (B10–12) 18
2.4 Synthetic a Priori Judgments and Knowledge
(B12–24) 20
2.5 Transcendental Philosophy (B24–7) 24
3 The Transcendental Aesthetic: Sensibility, Space,
and Time 27
3.1 Intuitions, Appearances, and the Forms of Sensibility
(B33–7) 27
3.2 The Presentation of Space (B37–41) 32
3.3 The Reality of Space (B42–5) 36
3.4 The Presentation and Reality of Time (B46–58) 39
vi CONTENTS
4 The Metaphysical Deduction: Judgments,
Concepts, and Categories 43
4.1 Sensibility and Understanding (B74–6) 44
4.2 Concepts and Judgments (B91–4) 47
4.3 Forms of Judgment and Categories (B95–101 and
106–13) 49
4.4 Synthesis (B102–5) 56
5 The Analogies and the Postulates: Fundamental
Principles about Substance, Causation, Community,
and Modality 61
5.1 The System of Principles (B187–9, 193–203, and
207–8) 62
5.2 Experience and Objectivity (B218–24) 64
5.3 The First Analogy: Substance (B224–32) 68
5.4 The Second Analogy: Causation (B232–56) 72
5.5 The Third Analogy: Community (B256–62) 78
5.6 The Postulates: Possibility, Actuality, and Necessity
(B265–74 and 279–82) 81
5.7 The Unity of Nature (B263–5) 84
6 The Transcendental Deduction: Why Intuitions
Fall Under Categories 87
6.1 The Challenge (B116–29) 89
6.2 Apperception and Judgment: Why Intuitions Must
Fall Under Categories (B129–43) 91
6.3 Interlude (B144–9 and 152–9) 97
6.4 Figurative Synthesis: Why Intuitions Can Fall Under
Categories (B150–2 and 159–69) 100
6.5 Dreams, Hallucinations, and Seemings 107
7 The Schematism: How Intuitions Fall Under
Categories (B176–87) 113
7.1 Transcendental Schemata as Criteria 114
7.2 Sensible and Empirical Schemata and the Synthesis
of Imagination 115
CONTENTS vii
7.3 Transcendental Schemata as Forms of Imaginative
Synthesis 119
7.4 An Overview of Kant’s Account of Synthetic a Priori
Knowledge 124
8 The Dialectic: The Limits of Speculative Reason 127
8.1 Ideas and Illusions (B368–75 and 390–3) 128
8.2 The Paralogisms: The Soul (B399–415 and 421–8) 130
8.3 The Antinomy: Nature (B432–48, 525–35, and
556–60) 133
8.4 The First Antinomy: The Limits of Nature (B454–7 and
545–51) 137
8.5 The Second Antinomy: The Divisibility of Substance
(B462–5 and 551–5) 142
8.6 The Third Antinomy: Freedom and the Laws of Nature
(B472–5 and 560–86) 145
8.7 The Fourth Antinomy: The Necessity of Nature
(B480–3 and 587–95) 150
8.8 The Ideal: God (B595–619, 624–9, 632–4, 637–8, and
653–6) 152
8.9 The Regulative Function of Ideas (B670–9, 536–7,
644–8, and 708–16) 155
9 Taking Stock 159
9.1 Transcendental Idealism and Things in Themselves
(B274–9 and 288–94) 159
9.2 Kant’s Achievement 164
Notes 167
Bibliography 175
Index of Citations of Passages in the Critique of Pure Reason 179
Index of Subjects and Names 182
PREFACE
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which is one of the greatest works
of the Enlightenment, has had, and continues to have, an enormous
impact on modern philosophy. But it is a very long and difficult
work that is not accessible to many of those with a potential interest
in it. The overall purpose of this short book is to help make Kant’s
thinking in the Critique of Pure Reason more accessible to a wider
range of readers. This is not to suggest that it is an easy read. No
book that seriously attempts to make sense of the Critique of Pure
Reason could be.
The book is designed primarily for two uses. One is to serve as a
freestanding introduction to and selective overview of the Critique
for those who would like to learn more about it, including educated
general readers, students with philosophical interests, students who
are considering taking a course on the Critique, and students who
are preparing for or taking such a course. The other is to serve
as a supplementary textbook for use in text-based courses on the
Critique or courses that cover significant material from the Critique.
Some suggestions to readers and instructors on how to use the book
appear immediately after this Preface.
It may seem surprising that I am offering such a short guide
to a book as long as Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but it is no
accident. Those who are approaching or tackling the Critique for
the first time need guidance on a few crucially important things: the
major claims Kant makes in the Critique, how they hang together,
and how Kant supports them; the way in which his most important
reasoning unfolds over the course of the Critique; and some of the
major interpretive disagreements between different approaches to
the Critique. These aspects of the big picture must, of course, be
backed up by enough attention to detail at key points to help a
new reader get through the most important sections of the Critique
without succumbing to utter confusion. A shorter book is an
PREFACE ix
appropriate instrument to accomplish these goals because excessive
attention to too many passages in the Critique that seem puzzling,
cryptic, ambiguous, enigmatic, or opaque—or to too many detailed
interpretive questions about specific points—is likely to distract,
discourage, and overwhelm someone who is new to the Critique.
My approach to Kant is sympathetic. Focusing on the most
important parts of the text of the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason, I seek to provide a clear and intelligible account of this
remarkable work, concentrating on matters which I take to be of
ongoing philosophical interest. Among the most important reasons
for reading great works in the history of philosophy, such as the
Critique, is that they are relevant to current philosophical concerns.
And perhaps the most important reason why undergraduates in
philosophy should be expected to study such works is to give them
access to an unsurpassable bounty of philosophical ideas, tools,
successes, and failures, which should enhance their philosophical
understanding and skills regardless of the particular topics in
philosophy in which they become most interested.
My guiding assumptions in the book are that Kant is and must
be understood as a humanist; that his reasoning in the Critique is
driven largely by an interest in human knowledge and the cognitive
capacities that make it possible; and that he is not a skeptic but
accepts that human beings have objective knowledge and seeks to
explain how this is possible. I offer an integrated account of the
way in which Kant does this that emerges progressively over the
course of the book. My central goal is to help those who are new to
the Critique make sense of it. In order to do this, I follow one main
line of interpretation rather than discussing a range of possibilities
at every turn. Where possible, I tend to favor readings that attribute
views to Kant that are more likely to be acceptable to educated and
scientifically literate readers. Some commentators may disparage
such an approach as “anodyne,”1 but if it engages those who are
new to the Critique and helps put them in a position to explore
alternative readings, it will have done a very useful job.
For those in the know, I should say something about my
interpretation—or, more accurately, my reconstruction—of the
Critique. Kant is sometimes understood as committed to a position
which he explicitly disavows, namely, subjectivist idealism, or some
variant thereof. In contrast, I interpret him as a moderate realist
who is committed to objects which are independent of us, but who