Brent’s Reviews > Critique of Pure Reason > Status Update

Five pages left. Kant was beautifully poetic on the task of philosophy. Gearing up to finish and write a nice long review.

Almost through the transcendental dialectic..

Began the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic where Kant discussed the logical principles of the regulative use of reason; to wit, 1) homogeneity, 2) specification, and 3) continuity. Non datur vacuum formarum sed etiam datur continuum formarum. Kant sees these logical principles as presupposing a transcendental ground in order for Reason to be able to adequately “do” natural science/biology, etc.

Through the transcendental dialectic! God remains, for Kant, the “faultless Idea.” A transcendental idea of pure reason that remains a priori necessary as a product of reason alone, and yet, can never be proved as existing (this implies determinacy which is beyond that which is a priori and become contingent). Arguments for God’s existence end in Ontological argument. God has regulative use for morality only.

In the ideal of pure reason. Kant is tackling the three arguments for God’s existence (ontological, cosmological/argument from contingency, and physico-theological/fine-tuning). He crushes Descartes and Leibniz in the ontological argument. So good.

Done with the Almost done with the Transcendental Dialectic. Finished the Antinomies of Pure Reason and beginning the Ideal[s] of Pure Reason. Then the appendix to the same. Then moving into second (last) major part, the Doctrine of Method. According to nature, everything is determined. Pure reason’s will is absolute freedom. Since it’s undetermined from world of phenomena, it’s absolutely free.

Still in the Antinomies of Pure Reason.

Four antinomies with thesis and antithesis and corresponding explanation. Some arguments are stronger than others. Kant’s whole goal in this section is to show the contradiction of pure reason without empirical intuition. Reason’s purpose is to synthesize according to pure concepts of the understanding the manifold of intuition. Each antinomy corresponds to a category (quantity, quality, modality, relation).

Finished the first part of the Transcendental Dialectic (Paralogisms of Pure Reason). Critiques Descartes, the Cartesians, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Mendelssohn. Deals with the illusions of pure reason concerning thinking “in general.” What Kant calls rational psychology. He charges fallacy of equivocation on Descartes meditation; viz, “Thinking” used in analytical/logical sense and outward / empirical sense.

Three kinds of objections to a proposition: Dogmatic, Critical, and Skeptical objections. Thoughts and External world are both mere representations of the Self. The “Ich” is the form of consciousness (itself undetermined without any sensibility). Remove the Thinking Subject and the entire physical world would cease to be. Attacking Descartes, Locke, Wolf, Leibniz, and Malebranche.