No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Kant's Transcendental Deductions*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
In default of astounding findings — Lampe penned much of the critical corpus — it is likely that continued Kantian exegesis will perforce be featured by more pain for less gain. And since philosophical events must in many respects overtake even so monumental a figure as Kant, does not the treatment of Kantian documents in current terms court anachronism? In a fashion which encourages such musings, the contents of this handsomely produced collection of essays, the proceedings of a 1987 conference at Stanford, deviate from straight exegesis. The contributors include prominent commentators on Kant: Lewis White Beck, Paul Guyer, Jules Vuillemin. A number — P. F. Strawson, John Rawls, Stuart Hampshire — are original philosophers of high calibre. Given the divergent pressures of textual fidelity, of novelty, and of philosophicality, the interaction challenges us to consider the prospects. An especially illuminating portion of the discussion in this regard brings together Dieter Henrich, Guyer, and Strawson.
- Type
- Critical Notices/Étude critiques
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Fall 1990 , pp. 575 - 582
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990
References
Notes
1 Strawson praises Henrich for clarifying “the methodology of the transcendental deduction and of Kant's transcendental strategy in general” (p. 69). “Methodology” is hyperbolic. The “methodology” is compositional, not logical; at any rate, it has to be determined that it is not compositional as a condition of Using it as a guide to what the argument comes to.
2 Obviously, quite a bit of this has been done in the vast interpretative literature. My point s i that, given the documents before us, the lesson of such dialectical treatment appears not to have been well assimilated.
3 Förster, while echoing (p. 236) Henrich's account of deduction, also fails to appreciate that the juridical analogy generates this question.
4 Lewis White Beck asks this sort of question, though not in respect of notions deduced, in his “Towards a Meta-Critique of Pure Reason,” Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978).Google Scholar Beck suggests that while Kant's argumentation may be good in context, the net result may be bad philosophy! This is something that every interpreter who approaches Kant in a justificatory spirit should ponder.
5 This point is well brought out in Pippin's, Robert B. “The Idealism of Transcendental Deductions,” Idealistic Studies, 18, 1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 This is the line taken by Buchdahl, Gerd. See Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969)Google Scholar.
7 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 18Google Scholar.
8 This notice was written during my tenure as a Canada Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia. Thanks go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.