Kant And The Transcendental Object

This book is an attempt to conduct a comprehensive examination of Kant's metaphysic of Transcendental Idealism, which is everywhere presupposed by his critical theory of knowledge, his theory of the moral and the aesthetic judgement, and his rational approach to religion. It will attempt to show that this metaphysic is profoundly coherent, despite frequent inconsistencies of expression, and that it throws an indispensable light on his critical enquiries. Kant conceives of knowledge in especially narrow terms, and there is nothing absurd in the view that thinkables must, in his sense, extend far more widely than knowables. Kant also goes further than most who have thought in his fashion in holding that, not only the qualities of the senses, but also the space and time in which we place them, have non-sensuous, non-spatial, and non-temporal foundations in relations among thinkables that transcend empirical knowledge. This contention also reposes on important arguments, and can be given a sense that will render it interesting and consistent.The book explores this sense, and connects it with the thought of Kant's immediate predecessors in the great German scholastic movement that began with Leibniz: this scholasticism, it will be held, is throughout preserved as the unspoken background of Kant's critical developments, whose great innovation really consisted in pushing it out of the region of the knowable, into the region of what is permissively or, in some cases, obligatorily, thinkable.

1. Introduction Kant considered the doctrine of transcendental idealism an indisp- sable part of the theory of knowledge presented in the Critique of Pure Reason. My aim in this book is to present a new defense of the coh- ence and plausibility of Kant’s transcendental idealism and its indisp- sability for his theory of knowledge. I will show that the main argument of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic is - fensible independently of some of Kant’s claims which are said to threaten its coherence. I have undertaken an inquiry into the coherence of Kant’s transc- dental idealism for the following reasons. A defense of the coherence of transcendental idealism is required by the existing state of Kantian scholarship. The claim that Kant’s transcendental idealism is incoh- ent has appeared in various forms over the last two centuries. The most powerful and elaborate criticism of Kant’s transcendental idealism is found in Part Four of Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense. Several comm- tators have tried to reestablish its coherence. Although Allison and other commentators have contributed ideas that are valuable for an 1 account of the coherence of Kant’s transcendental idealism, their - guments fall short as a response to the standard objection. Indeed, the claim that Kant’s transcendental idealism is incoherent continues to be the view held by most thinkers. I have limited my goal in this book to establishing the coherence of Kant’s transcendental idealism due to two related reasons.

Hegel's holistic metaphysics challenges much recent ontology with its atomistic and reductionist assumptions; Stern offers us an original reading of Hegel and contrasts him with his predecessor, Kant.

This landmark book is now reissued in a rewritten & updated edition that takes account of recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the 'Third Analogy', an expanded discussion of Kant's 'Paralogisms' & new chapters on Kant's theory of reason, theology & the 'Appendix to the Dialectic'.

Other works on Kant and on his Critical Philosophy attempt either to remove Kant's transcendental idealism from his system or to defend it as being essential to the Kantian enterprise. In Kant's Idealism, Professor Neujahr argues - he may be the first to do so - that there is no single doctrine that is Kant's transcendental idealism to either explain or explain away. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims to present a distinctive form of idealism he calls "transcendental" idealism and that he contrasts with the "empirical" idealism of his predecessors. Professor Neujahr argues that on the contrary there is no single form of idealism in Kant's system and no simple contrast between Kant's transcendental idealism and the idealist doctrines of his philosophical forebears. Neujahr finds (and clearly delineates) "strands of idealism" in Kant's philosophy. He argues that the source of these various forms of idealism is the conflicting demands of Kant's theories of perception (sensibility) and thought (understanding). How in fact a subject relates to an object finds no single unified explanation in the Critical Philosophy of Kant. Indeed, in spite of Kant's efforts to combine his various theories into a single theory of experience, his doctrines of perception and thought do not fit together. It is, Neujahr contends, this lack of fit that ultimately prevents there being any single transcendental version of idealism in Kant's system. This also helps explain why Kant's system is so difficult. Neujahr's critical review of that system in Kant's Idealism may be the "handle" needed to get hold of Kant's notoriously difficult but potentially very useful Critical Philosophy.

Detailed exploration of the Transcendental Dialectic, in which Kant uncovers the sources of metaphysics in human reason.