As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his Lectures (...) and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to cast new light on an important and often overlooked notion of perspectival knowledge arising from Kant. In addition to a traditional notion of perspectival knowledge as "knowledge from a vantage point", a second novel notion — "knowledge towards a vantage point" —is here introduced. The origin and rationale of perspectival knowledge 2 are traced back to Kant's so-called transcendental illusion. The legacy of the Kantian notion of perspectival knowledge 2 for contemporary discussions on (...) disagreement and the role of metaphysics in scientific knowledge is discussed. (shrink)

This entirely new translation of Critique of Pure Reason is the most accurate and informative English translation ever produced of this epochal philosophical text. Though its simple and direct style will make it suitable for all new readers of Kant, the translation displays an unprecedented philosophical and textual sophistication that will enlighten Kant scholars as well. This translation recreates as far as possible a text with the same interpretative nuances and richness as the original. The extensive editorial apparatus includes informative (...) annotation, detailed glossaries, an index, and a large-scale general introduction in which two of the world's preeminent Kant scholars provide both a succinct summary of the structure and argument of the Critique and a detailed account of its long and complex genesis. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to show that Kant’s prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge of things-in-themselves is motivated less by his anti-soporific encounter with Hume than by his new view of the distinction between “real” and “logical” modality, a view that developed out of his reflection on the rationalist tradition in which he was trained. In brief: at some point in the 1770’s, Kant came to hold that a necessary condition on knowing a proposition is that one be (...) able to prove that all the items it refers to are either really possible or really impossible. Most propositions about things-in-themselves, in turns out, cannot meet this condition. I conclude by suggesting that the best interpretation of this modal condition is as a kind of coherentist constraint. (shrink)

Most work in Kant’s epistemology focuses on what happens “upstream” from experience, prior to the formation of conscious propositional attitudes. By contrast, this essay focuses on what happens "downstream": the formation of assent (Fuerwahrhalten) in its various modes. The mode of assent that Kant calls "Belief" (Glaube) is the main topic: not only moral Belief but also "pragmatic" and "doctrinal" Belief as well. I argue that Kant’s discussion shows that we should reject standard accounts of the extent to which theoretical (...) reason can provide justified assent about things-in-themselves, in favor of one that is much more liberal. Interpretive benefits are not the only results of the discussion, however. I also hope it will become clear along the way that there is such a thing as Kantian Belief, and that we often have quite a lot of it. -/- . (shrink)

This book is about the Transcendental Dialectic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Unlike most other treatments of this subject matter, it does not focus on Kant's criticisms of metaphysical arguments. Rather, it considers Kant's account of why "metaphysical speculation about the unconditioned"—for instance, about objects like God or the entire world—"arises naturally and inevitably out of the very structure of human reason".Willaschek posits "a three-part template underlying" Kant's account of how we are led to make unwarranted metaphysical judgments: " (...) a transition from the logical to the real or transcendental use of reason and its ideas and principles, the tendency to misuse the latter by... (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions of (...) reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship in Kant between transcendental laws and empirical laws (focusing on causal laws), and then brings a particular interpretation of that issue to bear on familiar puzzles concerning the status of the regulative maxims of reason and reflective judgment. It is argued that the 'indeterminate objective validity' possessed by the regulative maxims derives ultimately from strictly constitutive demands of understanding.

In this paper, I consider whether a reading of Kant's solution to the Third Antinomy can offer material for devising a new model of transcendental argument. The problem that this form of argument is meant to address is an antinomy between two apparently contradictory claims, q and ¬q, where we seem equally justified in holding both. The model has the following form: p; q is a necessary condition of p; the only justification we have for q is that it is (...) a necessary condition of p; p is justified only in domain X (where X is a domain of objects of cognition); therefore, q is justified only in domain X. Because the argument shows that our justification for q is valid only in X, it also establishes that there is conceptual space to hold ¬q outside of X. (shrink)