Critique of Pure Reason

This paper will focus on the aims, methods and problems of both Husserl's and Foucault's projects in order to mark their differences and their similarities. In so doing, it will underscore their shared (Kantian) goal: to strengthen the human capacity for reason as a critical means of theoretical and practical reflection. It is my contention that the differences between the thinkers' specific aims only reinforce their respective routes towards a common objective. In this respect, I will argue that both thinkers actually engage in a project to objectify subjective reason. My reasoning follows that both apply a methodological reduction in order to understand and thereby reduce the discursive and social powers that determine the praxis of reasoning. As a result, Husserl sought to make the sciences aware of their foundations in the life-world, while Foucault sought to expose their basis in and through the workings of power.

This paper investigates the status of the subject in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by way of a comparison between the transcendental subject of apperception from the transcendental logic and the metaphysical subject of the paralogisms from the transcendental dialectic.

The paper was delivered for assessment by Howard Caygill at the CRMEP, Autumn 2017.

This work sits at the tail end of a progression of studies into theology, mysticism and philosophy which reaches its apex here philosophically. It builds off of the understanding of the (shared) foundations of theological, mystical and philosophical knowledge from antiquity that we explore in Theology Reconsidered and Homo Mysticus that have supported the development of advanced societies throughout human history, and conjoins this knowledge with more modern conceptions of the world as reflected in scientific disciplines such as Physics, Psychology, and Biology to establish a new system of metaphysics, a postmodern system of metaphysics, which accounts for philosophical skepticism as well as physical materialism and has both a psychological as well as physical element to it – the world as it appears and the world as it is in Kantian terms.

In creating this model, we first illustrate the deficiencies of the prevailing metaphysical paradigm, one that reflects a deep-seated belief in the ontological supremacy of “objective reality”, and find the source of these deficiencies, point them out and then make some adjustments to the underlying system (Kantian metaphysics primarily) such that its misguided conclusions are both brought to light and at the same time corrected. In so doing we in effect root our system of metaphysics, the Metaphysics of Awareness, directly into the Western philosophical tradition.

Along the way we directly address some of the more pressing postmodern concerns regarding how society is structured and how knowledge is acquired and gained more generally. This journey takes us from the rationalist and empiricist pre–Enlightenment Era philosophical positions, deep into Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where the very foundations of reason are analyzed in painstaking detail and the world as it truly is is relegated to the domain of (mere) speculation, whereas the world as it appears becomes the means by which we can understand the world definitively, scientifically.

This work analyzes the postmodern condition from a metaphysical perspective and looks to understand the intellectual building blocks out of which it was constructed and in so doing shed light on its flaws, imbalances really, that have led us to such precarious times where the foundations of everything are questioned and everything is about power (Nietzsche, Foucault). We follow the development of these ideas from Kant through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud, and then analyze these positions with respect to other dominant philosophical systems both from Western antiquity (Hellenic and Judeo-Christian) and Eastern antiquity (Indian and Chinese philosophy) to illustrate the imbalances of the postmodern philosophical position and through which we can construct a more (post) modern conception of metaphysics which fits the current scientific data.

What we arrive at is a metaphysical paradigm which reflects the very core of our psychological being, and also reflects the very core of being itself, a system which corrects at least some of the metaphysical distortions upon which postmodern philosophy is based, and provides us with the intellectual building blocks for us as individuals to better understand our place in the world and for us as a collective to better understand our place within Nature and ultimately the universe.

"Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), ed. Jonatan Meir, Three volumes, Mosad Bialik, Jerusalem

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.


The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.


Contents

Volume 1  - Critical Edition

Concerning this edition
Key personalities
Sefer Megale Temirin – Critical Edition


Volume 2 - Appendixes:
1. Glossary, Abbreviations, Acronyms
2. Explanation of the Speaking Names
3. Perl’s Hasidic Sources
4. Manuscripts of Sefer Megale Temirin
5. Yiddish Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin
Bibliographic Abbreviations

-------------------------------
Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl Blog, http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/

'Fine art' is a living phenomenon determined by the purposiveness of nature. 'Fine art' [schöne Kunst] contains a determination that arranges itself in accordance with the purposiveness of nature in Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) philosophy. This implies that 'fine art' is a living phenomenon, having a life of its own beyond its initial creation. In the Critique of Judgement 1790, Kant states that our aesthetic appreciation lies in the faculty of reflective judgment. What Kant incorporates into the third critique is that reflective judgment allows for the creation of new meaning in the face of the beautiful, the sublime, and 'fine art'. This paper will start by examining how Kant had previously set up the regulative ideal in his architectonic system which runs throughout his late philosophy. The purpose of this paper will be to show how Kant brings about a genuine unity between freedom and nature. This unity allows for the requisites for 'fine art' to synthesis with the purposiveness of nature. Kant extends this regulative in the third critique to show how judgment allows for new concepts that were previously unconceived by the understanding. In analysis of the requisites for 'fine art', we will discover how rules of reason harmonise and evolve through genius to originality.

The Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic is the science of the a priori principles of senses. The Transcendental Aesthetic shows the difference between the a priori and a posteriori representation and a priori and a posteriori perception in the field of Theory of Knowledge. The main question of this article is: How is possible the concept of space like a priori representation only as essence of senses, but not for “res per se” or “ding an sich” on it’s own nature?

Since the word “idealism” came into use in the 18th century, Berkeley and Kant have been considered leading exponents of this diverse, sometimes contradictory cluster of doctrines. While it is commonly argued by contemporary scholars that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Berkeley’s immaterialism represent vastly incompatible systems of thought, I contend that this “received view” harbors a serious misunderstanding of both philosophers. In spite of Kant’s ardent protests to the contrary, I argue that (as an interpretative framework) the received view radically underdetermines important convergences in the Kantian and Berkelean treatments of idealism, skepticism, and the nature of space and time. In this paper, I address these convergences with the aim of bringing Kant and Berkeley closer together.

This volume collects the plenary, main and session lectures of the 12th International Kant Congress “Nature and Freedom” at the University of Vienna from September 21 to 25, 2015.
The congress took into account two fundamental concepts of Kant’s Critical Works: “Nature” and “Freedom”. The international discussion of Kant’s philosophy nowadays is reflected in the broad range of attendees and their manifold contributions.

In this thesis, i analysed the conception of time starting from Aristotle to Bergson. In the details, i kept the time distinct from the  duration and focused on the inner time: the duration. And i also analysed the space based on Kant and Bergson.

In questo lavoro presentiamo la Critica della ragion pura di Immanuel Kant. Questa analisi intende guidare il lettore alla comprensione della prima critica kantiana in un linguaggio possibilmente chiaro e portando esempi concreti. Ca-pire la "Critica della ragion pura" guida il lettore ai vari temi della teoria della conoscenza kantiana, dalle nozioni di spazio-tempo sino alla critica della ra-gione. Riferimenti a testi esterni sono estremamente limitati. L'orientamento di questo lavoro è quello di una riflessione personale e costante che guardi conti-nuamente al presente panorama filosofico in modo che il lettore possa trarre qualche forma di piacere al di là dell'utilità. Biografia Giangiuseppe Pili è dottore di ricerca in filosofia e scienze della mente all'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele ed è attualmente assistant professor in Intelligence Studies and Intelligence Analysis alla Dublin City University. Egli ha fondato il sito www.scuolafilosofica.com, tra i maggiori portali filosofici italiani ed è il responsabile della collana "I libri di Scuola Filosofica". È parte del Laboratorio di Intelligence-Università della Calabria. Ha pubblicato libri di filosofia applicata a varie discipline tra cui Filosofia pura della guerra (2015), La guerra fredda-Una guida al più grande confronto del XX secolo (2018), Socrate va in guerra-Filosofia della guerra e della pace (2019).

Π ε ρ ί λ η ψ η
Η παρούσα εργασία αποσκοπεί στην ερμηνεία σύνολης της Κριτικής του Καθαρού Λόγου (ΚΚΛ) του Immanuel Kant. Για να επιτευχθεί μία τέτοια ερμηνεία προαπαιτείται η συνοπτική ανασυγκρότηση ολόκληρου του βιβλίου του Kant. Η ανασυγκρότηση αυτή, αν και περιγραφική ως επί το πλείστον, προχωράει τόσο σε επιμέρους ερμηνείες όσο και σε κριτική ανάλυση. Αυτή η ανασυγκρότηση καταλήγει στην παρουσίαση πινάκων που συνοψίζουν την δομή του εν λόγω βιβλίου. Στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο και έπειτα κι από μία σύντομη βιβλιογραφική ανασκόπηση παρέχεται και η ερμηνεία μου η οποία δεν αφορά αποκλειστικά το κατά πόσο απαντάται το κεντρικό ερώτημα της ΚΚΛ που θέτει ο ίδιος ο Kant προς απάντηση, αλλά την ευρύτερη σημασία του φιλοσοφικού συστήματος που θεμελιώνει μέσω της ΚΚΛ. Αυτή η σημασία είναι, σύμφωνα με την ερμηνεία μου, η πρώτη ολοκληρωμένη μεταφυσική θεμελίωση του νεωτερικού υποκειμένου ως ενότητα των όρων δυνατότητας της Ελευθερίας, της Γνώσης και της Ηθικής. Πρόκειται, με άλλα λόγια, για την σύλληψη του Υποκειμένου ως Υπερβατολογικού Υποκειμένου.

A b s t r a c t
This study aims at an interpretation of the work of Immanuel Kant “Critique of Pure Reason” (CPR). For achieving such an interpretation a prerequisite is the concise reconstruction of this Kant’s work. This reconstruction ends up to a presentation of certain tables which summarize the structure of the book in question. In the last chapter of my study, after a brief but succinct survey of the related literature my interpretation is provided which does not concern exclusively the issue of whether the central question of CPR is answered that Kant himself poses for answering, but the wider significance of the philosophical system of which he lays the foundation by the CPR. According to my interpretation this significance is that for the first time a throughout metaphysical foundation of the Subject as the unity of terms of possibility of Freedom, Knowledge as well as of Morality. In other words Kant’s work under consideration manifests the Subject as a Transcendental Subject.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

In several of his works, Immanuel Kant insists on the transcendental role of imagination in perception. In the Kantian scholarship, this claim has been interpreted in at least three ways: it is believed that the imagination is necessary to solve the riddle of the amodal character of perception, to justify the possibility of perceptual identity across time, and to explain the possibility of perceiving particular objects as such, viz. as belonging to a specific class of objects. The paper aims to show how E. Husserl inherited these sets problems without however having recourse to the imagination at all. In the last section, I will briefly analyse two types of mixed acts where perception and imagination unite, namely image consciousness (Bildbewusstsein) and what Husserl calls perceptual phantasy (perzeptive Phantasie). I here argue that these analyses do not contradict, but rather strengthen the argument defended throughout the paper, namely that in Husserl's phenomenology, and contrary to Kant's, the imagination does not assume a synthetic or transcendental function in perception.

In this paper, I aim to account for Kant's position on space and time that he takes in the Critique of Pure Reason: that they are a priori intuitions that we bring to the world exclusively through our minds, and one of the conditions for the possibility of experience in general. He makes his case in the form of a series of arguments in the section The Transcendental Aesthetic, and I go through them here.

This article argues that many (often Anglophone) interpreters of the Deduction have mistakenly identified Kant's aim as vindicating ordinary knowledge of objects and as refuting Hume's (alleged) skepticism about such knowledge. Instead, the article contends that Kant's aims were primarily negative. His primary mission (in the Deduction) was not to justify application of the categories to experience, but to show that any use beyond the domain of experience could not be justified. To do this, he needed to show that their proper use in attaining metaphysical knowledge was restricted to (actual and possible) experience. The central theoretical claims of previous metaphysics were thus rendered void. Kant was not out to save ordinary knowledge from the skeptic, at least not originally, since he did not think such knowledge was in danger. Rather, he wanted to sustain the skeptical claim that we cannot justify metaphysical claims about things in themselves, hence that we cannot gain metaphysical knowledge about the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the beginning of time, and the least parts of matter. He wanted to achieve this result in a more theoretically satisfying manner than had skeptical authors. Doing so would also allow him to curb certain forms of skeptical empiricism, by showing that we cannot disprove, or rule out as unintelligible, human freedom, an afterlife, or divine providence. The article ends by considering the retrospective rereadings of the Deduction by Hermann Cohen and P. F. Strawson, concluding that these rereadings force Kant's text into an alien mold, thereby diminishing its philosophical value as a work with its own distinctive aims and methods.

I discuss the critique of Kant in *Anti-Oedipus*, but also consider how Deleuze and Guattari have written the book to parallel the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason.  I then consider how their analysis of desire in this work compares to Hegel's analysis of desire in the Phenomenology of Spirit.  I conclude that Hegel's notion of the "desire for recognition" is insufficiently accounted for by Deleuze and Guattari.

At the start of The Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche offers his final assessment of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical achievement: “The Protestant minister is the grandfather of German philosophy …
Kant’s success is just a theologian’s success” (A 10). Although there has been a lot of discussion recently about the influence of Kant’s critical philosophy on Nietzsche’s evolving thought, very little attention has been paid to this provocative statement. Most historians of philosophy would
probably dismiss it as typically hyperbolic and leave it at that. But in this essay, I want to take this statement seriously and I want to ask to what extent it helps us gain a deeper understanding of Kant’s first Critique and of Nietzsche’s view of the relation between philosophy and religion.
My argument in this essay is organized as follows. First, I summarize Nietzsche’s genealogy of the Protestant roots of Kant’s idea of a critique of pure reason. Next, I explore Nietzsche’s general account of the priestly type, with a special focus on his claim that this type needs to exert its will to power through lies and deception. After that, I turn to Nietzsche’s earlier text, On the Genealogy of Morality, in order to examine his account there of the historical emergence of philosophers who had to camouflage themselves as priests in order to avoid being persecuted by the established society. I then return to The Antichrist in order to consider Nietzsche’s view that these philosophers used their natural drives and virtues to defend the priestly lies that they internalized while disguised as priests. Next, I explain why Nietzsche offers Kant as an example of this kind of priestly philosopher. His implied contrast is himself, and other philosophers like himself, whose strength, he says, allowed them to turn their skeptical talents against their internalized priestly lies. I then look to Kant’s debate with Hume in the first
Critique as an illustration of Nietzsche’s idea that there must be a confrontation between those weak-willed philosophers whose reason remain corrupted by priestly deception and those strong-minded
philosophers who are able to emancipate themselves from priestly manipulation. Finally, I consider how Nietzsche might have criticized Kant’s decision to conclude his first Critique with a moral theology.

When Kant read the first review of his Critique Of Pure Reason’s A edition by Garve & Feder he obviously found it outrageous. Not only did it overlook the fundamental revolution in philosophical thinking, it even classed his system with the idealistic approach of George Berkeley which Kant thought of as one of those that he just would have been refuted with his Critique. That’s how the review became an important starting point for Kant’s Prolegomena as well as for the changes that make up the B edition of the Critique. However, since parallels to Berkeley in fact don’t seem to be so erroneous and since the Prolegomena’s and B edition’s remarks regarding the bishop are far from simply clarifying the differences between Kant’s transcendental idealism and Berkeley’s immaterialism the question about their theoretical relation remains unanswered.
In my master thesis I’m reconstructing Kant’s arguments throughout the passages in A and B edition of the Critique Of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena where he outlines and defends transcendental idealism against other forms of idealism. In every step I try to stay highly sensible for Kant’s intentions and beliefs regarding the problems he just addresses and wants to solve. Nevertheless I will conclude by claiming that, despite some indisputable formal differences, the philosophical systems of Kant and Berkeley indeed notably share important contentual fundamentals.

La deduzione trascendentale nella Critica della ragion pura è un argomento forte, scettico-resistente, e non soltanto l’analisi di un dato (la scienza matematica della natura), come vuole la tradizione interpretativa che viene da Cohen e Cassirer. Ma per giustificare, in senso forte, la pretesa di validità delle nostre conoscenze a priori – cioè dell’elemento di universalità presente in ogni conoscenza empirica – è necessario approfondire il problema stesso della conoscenza rivolgendosi alle condizioni del pensiero. Per capire come è possibile conoscere, dobbiamo chiederci come è possibile pensare: è quello che fa la deduzione trascendentale delle categorie, qui esaminata nelle due versioni del 1781 (A) e del 1787 (B). L’ipotesi di questo saggio è che la prima versione è la chiave per intendere la seconda, di cui è come il non-detto: i risultati raggiunti, in A, con il trapasso della deduzione soggettiva in quella oggettiva, sono ormai completamente assorbiti e resi direttamente operativi nella deduzione senz’altro oggettiva di B. Ma per comprendere davvero quest’ultima bisogna leggerle sinotticamente, per seguire il percorso dall’una all’altra.

Celem niniejszej pracy jest przedstawienie zagadnienia specyficznej formy
myślenia jaką jest myślenie transcendentalne. Zagadnienie to wymaga jednocześnie
przedstawienia historycznych warunków w których rodzi się Kantowski projekt filozofii
transcendentalnej, a także dokładnej oraz szczegółowej analizy i wykładni struktury oraz
metody konstrukcji teoretycznej filozofii Kanta. Zgodnie z przyjętą przez Kanta definicją
światowego pojęcia filozofii konstrukcja taka musi zostać odniesiona do bezwarunkowych
celów. Dlatego też pomocniczym tematem pracy jest problem teleologii i definicji
człowieczeństwa.

Immanuel Kant was an 18th century Prussian born philosopher, often deemed to be the “central figure of modern philosophy” (Bammel, 2005). Kant’s breakthrough work was the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781 and it was in this that Kant’s so-called Copernican Revolution in metaphysics was revealed. In this essay concerning Kant’s influence on modern epistemology, I shall first explain the two primary subjects of the question; the nature of a synthetic a priori judgment and Kant’s Copernican Revolution. I shall then discuss the success of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in explaining the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, and examine challenges to Kant’s way of thought. Finally, I will conclude that Kant’s Copernican Revolution does explain the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments yet in so-doing he undermines the possibility of synthetic knowledge.

The Critique of Pure Reason inaugurated Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Commentators commonly distinguish between Kant’s Positive Project (PP), that is, his epistemology as laid out in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic, from his Negative Project (NP), expressed in terms of the destructive implications his epistemology has on speculative metaphysics and rational theology. Against this tradition I will argue that the whole of the Critique is largely a negative-destructive enterprise. I will focus on what is commonly taken as the centerpiece of the PP, that is, the Transcendental Deduction, and demonstrate that even here the NP is given normative priority. Though, to be sure, certain passages tend to encourage an interpretation of the PP as primary, I contend that this view is myopic and fails to pay sufficient attention to Kant’s global concerns in the Critique. I will demonstrate that a clear exposition of Kant’s metaphilosophical aims, commitments, and convictions is in fact corrosive to any such reading. The objective of this thesis, then, is two-fold: (1) to provide an account of Kant’s metaphilosophy in the Critique, and (2) to argue for what I will here and elsewhere refer to as the Primacy of the Negative Thesis, that is, that Kant prioritized boundary-setting over principle- generating.

In einer wichtigen Passage des Abschnitts über die „Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft“ in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1787) behauptet Kant, dass das „Ich denke […] ein empirischer Satz“ ist und „den Satz, Ich existiere, in sich“ (KrV B 422 Anm.) enthält. Dieser „Existentialsatz“ (KrV B 423 Anm.) ist, wie zu zeigen sein wird, zentral für Kants Verhältnisbestimmung von Natur und Freiheit. Wir können nach Kant unsere im Aktus des ‚Ich denke’ bewusste Existenz nicht nur als Erscheinung erkennen, indem wir das Mannigfaltige unserer im inneren Sinn gegebenen Vorstellungen durch Urteilsakte verknüpfen. Wir können diese Existenz auch durch die Kausalität aus Freiheit in einer Weise bestimmen, die uns in praktischer Hinsicht als noumenale Wesen zu erkennen gibt.