Dissertation

The limits of reason: Kant's theory of reflection and its criticism

Rush, Fred Leland

1996

Overview

The thesis provides a new interpretation of Kant's claims for the epistemological significance of aesthetic judgment. I argue that the harmony of the imagination and the understanding in aesthetic judgment consists in a potentially unending activity of mental modeling, or \"exhibiting,\" of figures corresponding to possible conceptual determinations of the perceptual form of a beautiful object. Since Kant holds just this capacity to exhibit concepts as figures in intuition to be a prerequisite to empirical conception, judgments of taste are based on an activity underlying all cognition. I then turn to another area in which Kant claims a close connection between reflection and conception--his analysis of empirical concept formation and application. Kant states that we must presuppose a principle of reflective judgment in order to insure the discoverability of natural regularity. Kant recognizes that transcendental under-determines empirical law, but determining the extent to which Kant thinks this is true is of the utmost importance. Untempered, Kant's broad claims that the principle is necessary for the capacity to form and apply empirical concepts commits him to the un-Kantian position that a reflective principle is constitutive and not merely regulative. I find, however, that the principle is not required for the formation and application of any empirical concepts, but rather for those that purport to correspond to empirically real properties of things. Last, I place Kant's theory of reflection in a historical context, considering one Idealist criticism of it--that of Hegel in Faith and Knowledge. I argue that Hegel's Kant critique is best understood as an attempt to overturn the delicate balance Kant sought to strike in according a transcendentally necessary principle merely regulative status.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Philosophy
• ISBN: 9798209278108