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Kantian Journal

2024 Vol. 43. №4

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Medova A.A.

“The Transcendental Collapse”: Analytic Reading of Kant

DOI
10.5922/0207-6918-2024-4-2
Pages
41-69
Kant metaphysics of experience objects of experience a priori pure categories of understanding causality necessity constituting the object of experience

Abstract

The starting point for this study is Kant’s approach to stating the problem of the conditions of possibility of experience and the thesis of the possibility of objects of experience (KrV, В 197). The thesis lends itself to three interpretations: the creationist interpretation, whereby a priori structures of understanding and reason create objects of experience; the moderate interpretation, in which a priori structures of understanding and reason objectify and identify intuitions; and the transcendental realist interpretation, which presents objects of experience as objectively existing. I then analyse the “polemical” style of the reading of Kant presented in the works of H. J. Paton, P. F. Strawson, J. Bennett, and others. This approach focuses on the problem of the possibility of experience, with its main source being Kant’s argument for causality in the Second Analogy from the Critique of Pure Reason. As a consequence of its polemic, this approach, as formulated by Bennett, treats the problem of the conditions of the possibility of experience as the problem of imposing a causal order on nature. Based on the results of my analysis, I propose two formulations of the above problem, which reflect the epistemic and ontological points of view respectively. In the former case, we have the problem of the “vicious circle” of cognition, while in the latter case we have “transcendental collapse” — that is, the problem of the correlation between reason and reality which acquires the transcendental property of “paradoxical compatibility”. Finally, I discuss the importance of the problem, arguing that it is the foundation of transcendental philosophy, and that which makes it productive.

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