Dennis Schulting – författare

This book offers an array of important perspectives on Kant and nonconceptualism from some of the leading scholars in current Kant studies. As well as discussing the various arguments surrounding Kantian nonconceptualism, the book provides broad insight into the theory of perception, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and aesthetics.

His idealism aside, Kantian nonconceptualism is the most topical contemporary issue in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In this collection of specially commissioned essays, major players in the current debate, including Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, engage with each other and with the broader literature in the field addressing all the important aspects of Kantian nonconceptualism. Among other topics, the authors analyse the notion of intuition and the conditions of its generation, Kant’s theory of space, including his pre-Critical view of space, the relation between nonconceptualism and the Transcendental Deduction, and various challenges to both conceptualist and nonconceptualist interpretations of Kant. Two further chapters explore a prominent Hegelian conceptualist reading of Kant and Kant’s nonconceptualist position in the Third Critique. The volume also contains a helpful survey of the recent literature on Kant and nonconceptual content.

Kantian Nonconceptualism provides a comprehensive overview of recent perspectives on Kant and nonconceptual content, and will be a key resource for Kant scholars and philosophers interested in the topic of nonconceptualism.

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant''s Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically.

Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception.

Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant''s derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood.

New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan)

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant''s Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically.

Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception.

Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant''s derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood.

New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan)

Der Band enthält zweiundzwanzig Texte von anerkannten Experten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, die sich mit der Theorie der Apperzeption, mit der transzendentalen Deduktion der Kategorien und mit den Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft aus sehr unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auseinandersetzen. Untersucht werden vor allem (1) die philosophischen Quellen der Kantischen Begriffe „Apperzeption" und „Selbstbewusstsein", (2) die historische Entwicklung der Lehre der Apperzeption und der Deduktion der Kategorien in der sogenannten vor-kritischen Phase, (3) Struktur und Inhalte sowohl der A- als auch der B-Deduktion der Kategorien, und schließlich (4) den (Kantischen, aber auch nicht Kantischen) Sinn der Begriffe der „Apperzeption" und des „Selbstbewusstseins".

Der Band enthält zweiundzwanzig Texte von anerkannten Experten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, die sich mit der Theorie der Apperzeption, mit der transzendentalen Deduktion der Kategorien und mit den Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft aus sehr unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auseinandersetzen. Untersucht werden vor allem (1) die philosophischen Quellen der Kantischen Begriffe „Apperzeption" und „Selbstbewusstsein", (2) die historische Entwicklung der Lehre der Apperzeption und der Deduktion der Kategorien in der sogenannten vor-kritischen Phase, (3) Struktur und Inhalte sowohl der A- als auch der B-Deduktion der Kategorien, und schließlich (4) den (Kantischen, aber auch nicht Kantischen) Sinn der Begriffe der „Apperzeption" und des „Selbstbewusstseins".

In this book, Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kant’s radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. This defence is mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought, or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things.