Critique of Pure Reason

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1781

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prefaces and Introduction

Part I: “Transcendental Aesthetic”

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book I, Chapter I

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book I, Chapter II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book II, Chapters I-II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book II, Chapter III

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Books I-II, Chapter I

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter III

Transcendental Doctrine of the Method

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Books I-II, Chapter IChapter Summaries & Analyses

Transcendental Doctrine of Elements

Part II: Transcendental Logic, Division II: Transcendental Dialectic, Introduction - Book I Summary

The “Transcendental Dialectic” deals primarily with the illusions of reason. Illusions and appearances are not the same for Kant. Kant creates a distinction between immanent and transcendent principles. Immanent principles stay within the limits of possible experience; transcendent principles do not. Kant writes that “the transcendental dialectic will settle for uncovering the illusion of transcendent judgments and for simultaneously keeping it from deceiving us” (350). That said, these illusions will never completely evaporate because they are endemic to reason itself.

Reason is the power of the mind to make inferences. It is the highest of the faculties of the mind. The process of cognition proceeds from intuition to understanding to reason. Whereas understanding unites the appearance of experience through the application of rules, reason unites the rules of the understanding through fundamental principles. Reason has no direct connection to intuitions of the mind but only mediately through understanding. Reason attempts to bring order and unification to experience through the fewest number of principles possible.

The basic work of reason is to find “the unconditioned” that underlies the conditioned cognitions of understanding. Since the unconditioned is nowhere to be found in experience (but is necessary to bring reason to the conditioned) this is a transcendent principle—and so are any that follow from it. Determining whether there is any “objective correctness” to any of reason’s claims on the basis of this fundamental principle is the work of the dialectic. Reason deals primarily in ideas, i.e., concepts “framed from notions and surpassing the possibility of experience” (367).

Kant is concerned with a specific kind of idea in the dialectic: transcendental ideas, the ideas of pure reason, that is, reason unmixed with experience. These transcendental ideas can be divided into three kinds: the idea of the thinking subject (transcendental psychology), the idea of the universe (transcendental cosmology), and the idea of the supreme being (transcendental theology). He will start with an investigation of the illusions of psychology.

Part II: Transcendental Logic, Division II: Transcendental Dialectic, Book II, Chapter I Summary

Kant introduces Book II of the “Transcendental Dialectic” in which he sets up three fundamental kinds of dialectical problems that arise in pure reason: paralogisms, antinomies, and the ideal. Antinomies and the ideal will be tackled in subsequent chapters. Kant immediately turns his attention to the transcendental paralogisms. He distinguishes a transcendental paralogism from a logical paralogism. A logical paralogism is just a formal mistake in any given syllogism, or inference of reason from premises. It is a fallacy in reasoning. A transcendental paralogism, on the other hand, is an inferential fallacy that has a basis “in the nature of human reason,” which means that these illusions are “unavoidable although not unresolvable” (382). These paralogisms all relate to transcendental psychology and its illusions.

Kant presents the four paralogisms of pure reason: substantiality, simplicity, personality, and ideality Each of these relates to the I, or soul, or thinking thing, the basis of a transcendental psychology. The subject (self, I) takes itself to be a soul and through the pure use of reason illegitimately predicates substantiality, simplicity, etc. to itself. These are arrived at through a mistake in reasoning that is difficult to avoid. Take, for example, the third paralogism. This states that anyone conscious of his/her identity over time is a person, and that the soul is conscious of this. Therefore, it is a person. Kant shows that while this consciousness is necessary for personhood it is not enough to guarantee it. In fact, none of the ways the self predicates of itself through these paralogisms is sufficient. Kant writes, “Hence the whole of rational psychology falls, as a science surpassing all powers of human reason; and nothing is left for us but to study our soul by the guidance of experience” (410). Instead, then, of getting caught up in these mistakes of pure reason, the soul should turn to practical experience to discover itself through action in the world and through its reverence for, and adherence to, strict moral discipline.

Note: this chapter was entirely rewritten for the second edition of the book published in 1787. Both versions of the chapter are included in this selection.

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Books I-II, Chapter I Analysis

Reason is subject to “unavoidable illusion” because of the nature of its relation to experience. Kant writes “there is no concept that can be shown and made intuitive in a possible experience…that is to be adequate to reason’s demand” (380). Because of this, reason must always infer beyond the bounds of possible experience. Kant does not blame this problem on the mistakes of any philosopher or school of thought. It is, rather, something inherent in reason itself and a source of illusion with which we all must wrestle. We cannot get rid of the illusion completely. However, through a critique of the illusions, we can come to recognize them for what they are, and then we will no longer fall for their faux insights.

This does not mean that Kant is disparaging of the application of reason. In fact, Kant thinks that reason is the highest human faculty and has extreme respect for it. His criticisms of reason are out of love for reason and are, in a sense, self-criticisms of reason. Kant’s enlightenment philosophy should never be taken as a call to reject the ultimate value of reason in human life.

That said, Kant does have a very nuanced and specific view of the faculty of reason. He notices that it is liable to make many mistakes, which are caused by the dialectical illusions it faces. He puts to himself and his reader a specific question to deal with this: “Our task in the transcendental dialectic, then, will be to answer the following questions. Does that principle–i.e., that the series of conditions extend up to the unconditioned–have, or does it not have, its objective correctness; and what inferences issue from it for the empirical use of understanding?” (358) In other words, can we ever come to objective truth regarding the unconditional foundations of things or not? The answer will be no, but that does not mean we should abandon the search for the unconditional or reject the call of reason to find it. We simply must look in a different way and for a different standard than objective truth.

The section on the paralogisms functions as the first of three investigations into the dialectical illusions of reason. These regard the “rational psychology” of the mind and its attempt to know itself. Since reason always attempts to reach the unconditioned first principles for the possibility of our experiences, it is only natural that it does this when it turns on itself and consciousness. Because of this, it attempts to posit “objective correctness” to its claims about the self: that it is a substance, that it is simple, etc. However, while these may be practically useful views to hold about oneself, it is illegitimate to claim that they are objectively correct. His simplest and most lucid explanation of why we cannot claim objective correctness is that “what I must presuppose in order to cognize an object at all cannot itself be cognized as an object by me” (422). Put differently, the conscious self, which is necessary to perceive objects, cannot itself be an object for consciousness. It will always be a subject. Therefore, cognition of its objectivity is impossible, so it cannot ever be said with objective correctness that it is a substance, a person, etc.