Johannes Haag

Kant on the sources of metaphysics: The dialectic of pure reason, by Marcus Willaschek. Cambridge University Press, 2018, 298pp. $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781108472630

European Journal of Philosophy

Der Blick nach innen - Wahrnehmung und Introspektion

Denken und Welt – Wege kritischer Metaphysik

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the firs... more We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the first (and polemical) conception, critical metaphysics analyses nothing more than the form of thought and thereby misses the proper point of metaphysics, namely to investigate the form of reality. According to the second (and affirmative) conception, critical metaphysics starts from the supposed insight that the form of reality can’t be other than the form of thought and it is thus not necessary to analyse anything but that form. We argue that the first conception is too weak while the second is too strong. Then we sketch an alternative conception of critical metaphysics, a conception we find expressed both in Kant’s B-Deduction and in the way Barry Stroud has recently investigated the possibilities of metaphysics. According to such a conception, a properly critical metaphysics needs to proceed in two steps: first, it needs to analyze the most general and necessary form of any thought that i...

Schwerpunkt: „Kritische Metaphysik“

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Methodologische Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Denken und Sprechen

Ein philosophischer Überblick, 2000

Spinoza �ber die Intentionalit�t geistiger Zust�nde

Deutsche Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie, 2009

11. Thomas Reid

Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Texte und Kommentare, 2010

Nachwort: Ideen – Systematischer Ausblick

Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Texte und Kommentare, 2010

Erfahrungssubjekte und Erfahrungsinhalte

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2000

Kant on the sources of metaphysics: The dialectic of pure reason, by Marcus Willaschek. Cambridge University Press, 2018, 298pp. $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781108472630

European Journal of Philosophy

Der Blick nach innen - Wahrnehmung und Introspektion

Denken und Welt – Wege kritischer Metaphysik

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the firs... more We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the first (and polemical) conception, critical metaphysics analyses nothing more than the form of thought and thereby misses the proper point of metaphysics, namely to investigate the form of reality. According to the second (and affirmative) conception, critical metaphysics starts from the supposed insight that the form of reality can’t be other than the form of thought and it is thus not necessary to analyse anything but that form. We argue that the first conception is too weak while the second is too strong. Then we sketch an alternative conception of critical metaphysics, a conception we find expressed both in Kant’s B-Deduction and in the way Barry Stroud has recently investigated the possibilities of metaphysics. According to such a conception, a properly critical metaphysics needs to proceed in two steps: first, it needs to analyze the most general and necessary form of any thought that i...

Schwerpunkt: „Kritische Metaphysik“

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Methodologische Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Denken und Sprechen

Ein philosophischer Überblick, 2000

Spinoza �ber die Intentionalit�t geistiger Zust�nde

Deutsche Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie, 2009

11. Thomas Reid

Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Texte und Kommentare, 2010

Nachwort: Ideen – Systematischer Ausblick

Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Texte und Kommentare, 2010

Erfahrungssubjekte und Erfahrungsinhalte

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2000

11. Thomas Reid

Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Texte und Kommentare, 2010

Naturalism and the Primacy of the Practical: Kant on the Form of Theoretical and Practical Reason

Giladi, P. (ed.), Responses to Naturalism: Critical Perspectives from Idealism and Pragmatism, Routledge

In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant emphasises that " it is … always only one and the same ... more In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant emphasises that " it is … always only one and the same reason which, whether for a theoretical or a practical aim, judges according to a priori principles " (CPrR 5:121). And yet the form of practical judgement clearly is different from the form of theoretical judgement: in theoretical judgement, the object of representation precedes the representation; whereas in practical judgement the representation of the object precedes the object. Theoretical judgement thus is tailored to the description of nature and its specific (i.e. mechanistic) causality, whereas practical judgmeent serves to articulate the intentions of finite rational beings and their specific (i.e. teleological) causality. Kant argues that there is a primacy of practical reason that affords some theoretical propositions (that cannot be validated by theoretical reason alone) to be sufficiently authenticated by practical reason if they belong to the latter's (morally founded) interest, notably the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Furthermore, it does not suffice for theoretical reason to simply accept these propositions; it is required on the grounds of the primacy of practical reason " to compare and connect them with everything that it has within its power as speculative reason " (CPrR 5:121). In this chapter, I will show that the far-reaching results of this claim are worked out no earlier than in the completion of the Critique of the Power of Judgement. In this culminating work of Kant's Critical Philosophy, we can observe how much the naturalistic description of the empirical world in the end has to submit to the practical interest of reason without at the same time transgressing the ultimate conceptual barrier between the theoretical and the practical. While the power of judgement even brings the practical form of reason and its characteristic causality to bear on the description of empirical reality, it does so only in its reflective or regulative mode. A teleological description of nature, consequently, cannot afford us a theology and the barrier between theoretical and practical reason can be shown to be upheld by the ethicotheology of the third Critique.

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