Henry E. Allison

Kant attempts to establish a correlation between the unity of self-consciousness and the experience of an objectively valid world in the “Transcendental Deduction” of the Critique of Pure Reason. For this purpose, he plots a sophisticated proof which contains sub-arguments and several aspects. This study focuses in the extended analysis of the central argument exposed in the first half of the “Transcendental Deduction” of the second edition.  Some of the argumentation strategies adopted by Kant and the interpretations of the prominent commentators corresponding to these approaches are compared. For the ease of the analysis, the content of the argument is disassembled into main and side components. Detailed explanations are provided for each of these components. Although they receive relatively less attention of scholars, in this study the side features are considered to have significant contributions to the overall comprehension of the deduction. I suggest that concerning them in the relevant interpretations will help to get a better insight of the text. Some additional supportive accounts are also supplied for Henry Allison’s ‘reciprocity’ reading of the deduction.


ÖZET

Salt Aklın Eleştirisi’nin merkezinde yer alan “Transandantal Dedüksiyon” bölümünde Kant, kendi kendinin bilincinin birliği ile deneyimin nesnelliği arasında geçerli bir ilişki kurmaya çalışmaktadır. Bu amaçla geliştirdiği sav, birçok bileşeni bir arada ele alması nedeniyle oldukça karmaşık bir yapıdadır ve farklı şekillerde yorumlanmaktadır. Bu tez çalışması, ikinci basımdaki dedüksiyonun ilk bölümünün irdelenmesini kapsamaktadır. Söz konusu savı oluşturan ana ve yan öğeler ayrıntılı olarak incelenmiş ve felsefe yazınında göreceli olarak daha az dikkat çeken yan öğelerin Kant’ın dedüksiyonunun doğru olarak anlaşılmasına sağladıkları katkılar değerlendirilmiştir. Ayrıca Henry Allison’ın ‘karşılıklılık’ yorumunu destekleyecek çıkarımlar ve metinsel bulgular ortaya konulmuştur.

Nosso principal objetivo consiste em resgatar a polêmica entre Max Weber e seus contemporâneos acerca da ética kantiana e, ao mesmo tempo, desenvolver uma revisão crítica do capítulo de W. Schluchter: “Isenção dos juízos de valor e discussão sobre valores: Max Weber entre Immanuel Kant e Heinrich Rickert”. Para isso, pretende-se aproximar a teoria dos valores de Max Weber aos estudos mais recentes sobre meta-ética. A leitura weberiana da ética de Kant foi baseada na problemática por trás da orientação puramente racional do agir moralmente correto, opondo o sentido valorativo formalizado conceitualmente e o valor real das ações humanas. Para uma melhor delimitação dessas questões, ao final será apresentada uma breve revisão bibliográfica dos escritos de Kant e uma tabela comparativa dos esquemas teóricos de Weber e de Kant, contrastando as conclusões da presente análise com o gráfico comparativo construído por Wolfgang Schluchter no referido capítulo. Esta apresentação visa fornecer apenas um enfoque provisório para futuras investigações e poderá servir de auxílio para uma leitura de Kant que problematize aspectos teóricos assumidos por autores contemporâneos como Habermas e Rawls, sem avançar, no entanto, nos esforços de uma revisão sistemática desses autores mais recentes.

There has been a real Kant-Renaissance starting from the 1960s, especially regarding Kant's ethics. In particular, a raised interest in Kant's normative ethics , rather than just in the foundations, has generated not only a number of interesting interpretations but various new perspectives inspired by Kant's approach to practical reason, motivation, normativity and freedom. The paper illustrates this debate and deals with some problems which have been detected in Kant's theory by the interpreters.

The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) delved into the freedom and determinism debate by offering a distinct and highly idiosyncratic approach to the issue.  Kant’s approach is integrated with views on epistemology,  the limits of metaphysics,  as-well-as the implications of freedom and determinism upon morality itself.  A justifiable treatment of Kant’s views on these subjects will require an extensive book length study; as such my concern in this paper will be solely focused on the architectonic of the Third Antimony section of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I will not be concerned with the resolution of the Third Antimony; rather I will investigate the basis upon which the antithetic stands. Contrary to the prevalent view in the secondary literature, which holds that the Third Antimony is an argument from the Second Analogy,  I sketch the outlines of an argument that claims the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is principally at work (the rationalistic view). In order to achieve this, I will: first briefly provide the background concepts that are necessary to understand the Third Antimony; second, provide an overview of the arguments in the Third Antinomy; third, reconstruct the arguments of the Antimony highlighting the role of the PSR -  I will do this primarily by comparison with the contemporary interpretations of the Third Antinomy found in the works of Eric Watkins’s Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (representing the rationalist view) and Henry Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Freedom (representing the Analogies view); and finally, I will explore the two ways in which the SPR is being used in the Antimony – I will achieve this by presenting textual evidence of how Kant discusses the PSR in the Critique of Pure Reason. I will conclude that, in light of my argument, Kant must be thought of as closer to rational metaphysics than is generally acknowledged; however I acknowledge this suggestion would take a more extensive and through investigation to establish by further  scholarship.

Este artículo, en un primer momento, expone el problema de las dos partes de la ‘Deducción’ de Kant; luego de esto, se muestra cómo Allison interpreta el problema en cuestión y, de paso, da su interpretación sobre la ‘validez objetiva’ de las categorías; posteriormente, se analiza el contraste entre lo dicho por Kant en los Prolegómenos acerca de la diferencia entre juicios de percepción y juicios de experiencia, por un lado, y la diferencia establecida en los §§18-19 de la ‘Deducción’ entre la unidad subjetiva y la unidad objetiva de la conciencia, por otro lado. Este contraste permitirá concluir, a partir de la interpretación de Allison, que si las posturas de Kant expuestas en los Prolegómenos y en la Crítica de la razón pura son consistentes, entonces no se explica el hecho de que existan
ciertos juicios sin la participación de los conceptos puros del entendimiento; si, por otra parte, se considera que lo dicho por Kant en la ‘Deducción’ es una modificación de lo expuesto en los Prolegómenos, existirían juicios válidos subjetiva y objetivamente al mismo tiempo.