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The Demand for Systematicity and the Authority of Theoretical Reason in Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2017

Sasha Mudd
Sasha Mudd*
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
*
Email: A.R.Mudd@soton.ac.uk
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Abstract

Kant’s notoriously unclear attempt to defend the regulative principle of systematic unity as the supreme principle of theoretical reason in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic has left its status a source of controversy. According to the dominant interpretation, the principle ought to be understood as a methodologically necessary device for extending our understanding of nature. I argue that this reading is flawed. While it may correctly affirm that the principle is normative in character, it wrongly implies that it binds with mere hypothetical necessity. I offer novel grounds for thinking that if reason’s principle is normative, then it binds agents categorically instead.

Keywords

theoretical reasoncategorical imperativehypothetical imperativesystematicity
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 81 - 106
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

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