Although Kant never developed a theoretical psychology of his own, he discussed psychological topics throughout his life. These discussions ranged from early, brief remarks on mind-body interaction in the True Estimation of Living Forces (§§5-6, 1:20-1) of 1747 to the relatively late, extended treatment of the faculties of cognition in the Anthropology, published from Kant's lecture notes under his supervision in 1797. In his lectures on metaphysics, from the 1760s onward, he followed common practice and regularly discussed what he and his contemporaries called “empirical” and “rational” psychology (records of these lectures survive through student notes: 28:59- 122, 221-301, 583-94, 670-90, 735-75, 849-74, 886-906). And in the preface to his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) he examined the question of whether empirical psychology could ever achieve a scientific status like that of physics, notoriously answering that it could not (4:471). For our purposes, however, the central problems pertaining to Kant's relation to psychology arise in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the Critique Kant distinguished his philosophical aim from that of empirical psychology. He also investigated the possibility of empirical and especially of rational psychology. In addition, and problematically, he adopted, even in the avowedly philosophical portions of the work, an implicitly psychological vocabulary. Because of his extensive use of this vocabulary, interpreters have, from the instant of the Critique's publication, disputed the extent to which Kant rested his arguments on psychological ground.

In the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, Kant wrote:

However, the initial response to Kant's argument, which he also titled the “transcendental deduction of the categories”(A 85 /B 117), was largely one of incomprehension, and in the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, published in 1786, Kant himself acknowledged that precisely “that part of the Critique which should have been the clearest was the most obscure, or even revolved in a circle” (4:474 n.).So in the second edition of the Critique, published the following year, Kant completely rewrote the transcendental deduction. He claimed that this revision touched only the manner of “presentation,” not the “propositions themselves and their grounds of proof” (B xxxvii-xxxviii). But in spite of Kant's efforts at clarification, the intervening two centuries have brought little agreement in the interpretation of the deduction, even on the fundamental question of whether the two editions of the Critique, in 1781 and 1787, try to answer the same question by means of the same argument. The last three decades alone have brought forth dozens of competing interpretations or “reconstructions” of Kant's transcendental deduction.

Kant's attitude toward metaphysics and ontology is ambiguous in his Critical work. On the standard view of the Critique of Pure Reason, the positive and negative aspects of this attitude map neatly onto the two major sections of that work. After that first section presents a “Transcendental Analytic” of the understanding, or a “metaphysics of experience,” which legitimates the use of certain pure concepts necessary for structuring our spatiotemporal knowledge, a Transcendental Dialectic is provided to expose fallacies that theoretical reason entangles itself in when it extends itself beyond experience. Just prior to that Dialectic, Kant also inserts an “Appendix” on “concepts of reflection” that sketches how the restriction of our use of pure concepts to the domain of experience limits the general claims of the traditional ontology of the Leibnizian system. These attacks would appear to complement each other. Whereas the specific errors of rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology are exposed in the core of the Dialectic, the critique of ontology and the general discussions of the operations of “reflection”and “reason” suggest a principle of closure for dismissing all claims of our theoretical reason that would stray beyond a merely immanent spatiotemporal field.

The Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason has three main sections: the Metaphysical Deduction, the Transcendental Deduction, and the Analytic of Principles. The second and third sections have spawned much lively controversy, both interpretive and substantive. The first, by contrast, has generated little interest. Most readers have thought it clear what Kant means to establish here, and how. Most have also thought it plain that his argument is a failure, unworthy of continued exploration.

I will not try to defend the argument of the Metaphysical Deduction. I will try to show that this section of the Critique contains material of considerable importance, however. First I will summarize Kant's argument (I) and review some of the difficulties with it (II). Then I will discuss the notion of synthesis, trying to show that the Metaphysical Deduction helps to shed light on this important but otherwise obscure notion (III). Finally, I will comment briefly on the central contention of the Metaphysical Deduction (IV).

The literature on Kant, as might be expected from both the range of his work and his centrality in the history of modern philosophy, is enormous. The following bibliography is necessarily selective. In view of the aims of the present series, it focuses on recent books and collections of articles, although including some older works that have attained classical status. Only very important articles that have not been republished in collections by their authors or anthologies have been listed separately; individual articles in collections that are included are not listed separately. The bibliography also emphasizes works in English, although some of the most important works in German and a few in French have been included. Books that include especially extensive bibliographies are noted. Further bibliographical information can be found in the bibliographical surveys by Rudolf Maker that have been published since 1969 in Kant-Studien, the official journal of the Kant-Gesellschaft. More recently, bibliographical surveys prepared by Manfred Kuehn have been published in the newsletter of the North American Kant Society. An annotated bibliography on Kant's ethics is Kantian Ethical Thought: A Curhcular Report and Annotated Bibliography(Tallahassee: Council for Philosophical Studies, 1984).

CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT

With the Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant completed his critical enterprise. To this day, however, the third of his three Critiques has remained the darkest of Kant;s published works and the most inaccessible to the philosophical reader. Its two parts, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment, are bracketed together by a formidable Introduction - two, in fact: one usually referred to as the First Introduction, and the shorter one Kant substituted for it for publication. Both introductions are relentlessly technical, both rehearse the Kantian scheme as a whole, drawing and redrawing well-known and new distinctions and contrasts; both address themselves to “philosophy as a system” They see the third Critique as a culmination and completion of critical philosophy, now enlarged in scope and thus requiring a number of retrospective adjustments to earlier projections of the architectonics of the entire edifice.

Defining the limits of a historical period always entails an element of arbitrariness. There are good reasons, however, for setting the conclusion of the first cycle in the reception of Kant's critical program at August 7, 1799, just under twenty years after the first appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason. The date marks the publication of Kant's open letter in which he repudiated Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and other attempts at bringing his transcendental philosophy to completion. His own critical work, which in the Critique he had claimed to be only of an introductory nature (A 11 / B 25), he now declared to constitute the system of pure reason itself. From that date onward the very reception of Kant became a problem, itself the subject of interpretation and reception. Moreover, at the end of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant had predicted that, following the path laid out by his program, one could “secure for human reason complete satisfaction” in regard to all its metaphysical preoccupations, and that this goal could be achieved “before the end of the present century” (A 856 / B 884).

Kant's philosophy is often characterized as an attempt to provide the metaphysical foundation for Newtonian science. In such a characterization, the revolutionary metaphysical stance that Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason, based on a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, is seen as the result of his commitment to show the legitimacy of Newtonian science in a manner that still leaves space for morality and religious belief. His well-known dictum that he had “found it necessary to deny knowledge [of reality in itself], in order to make room for faith” (B xxx) bears witness to the legitimacy of this characterization of the Kantian project.

Such a description of the Critique leaves open, however, the question of Kant's more general beliefs about the philosophy of science. In this chapter, I shall show that Kant advocates a more empirically minded philosophy of science than could be anticipated from his views on Newtonian physics. In particular, I will show that Kant presents an account of the use of theoretical concepts in the development of scientific theories under the rubric of the “regulative use of reason” The understanding of science that Kant presents under this title has a great deal in common with the pragmatic understanding of scientific practice, in which the fallibility of particular scientific theories is stressed. Once the regulative use of reason is taken into account, it becomes clear that Kant views the scientific enterprise in a more empirical and less aprioristic manner than has been commonly thought.

Kant invented a new way of understanding morality and ourselves as moral agents. The originality and profundity of his moral philosophy have long been recognized. It was widely discussed during his own lifetime, and there has been an almost continuous stream of explanation and criticism of it ever since. Its importance has not diminished with time. The quality and variety of current defenses and developments of his basic outlook and the sophistication and range of criticism of it give it a central place in contemporary ethics. In the present essay I offer a general survey of the main features of Kant's moral philosophy. Many different interpretations of it have been given, and his published works show that his views changed in important ways. Nonetheless there is a distinctive Kantian position about morality, and most commentators are agreed on its main outlines.

THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY Germany

Kant's early philosophical career before the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in May 1781 was dominated by an unhappy love affair. “I have had the fate to be in love with metaphysics,” Kant wrote ruefully in 1766, “although I can hardly flatter myself to have received favors from her.” This preoccupation with metaphysics provided the leitmotif, and indeed the underlying drama, behind Kant's early intellectual development. We can divide his career into four phases according to whether he accepted or rejected the blandishments of his mistress. The first phase, from 1746 to 1759, is the period of infatuation. During these years Kant's chief aim was to provide a foundation for metaphysics. Accordingly, he developed a rationalist epistemology that could justify the possibility of knowledge of God, providence, immortality, and the first causes of nature. The second phase, from 1760 to 1766, is the period of disillusionment. Kant broke with his earlier rationalist epistemology and inclined toward skepticism, utterly rejecting the possibility of a metaphysics that transcends the limits of experience.

Kant's practical philosophy in its entirety comprises ethics and philosophy of right, moral theology, moral anthropology, and the philosophy of history, and combines them into one impressive theoretical structure. The theory of the self-legislation of pure practical reason developed in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788) stands at the center of this system. Through this theory Kant provides an entirely new theoretical foundation for justification in practical philosophy. In the previous history of practical philosophy foundations and first principles were sought in objective ideas, in a normative constitution of the cosmos, in the will of God, in the nature of man, or in prudence in the service of self-interest; but Kant was convinced that these starting-points were without exception inadequate for the foundation of unconditional practical laws, and that human reason could only concede absolute practical necessity and obligatoriness to norms that arose from its own legislation.

Among the pillars of Kant's philosophy, and of his transcendental idealism in particular, is the view of space and time as a priori intuitions and as forms of outer and inner intuition respectively. The first part of the systematic exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason is the Transcendental Aesthetic, whose task is to set forth this conception. It is then presupposed in the rest of the systematic work of the Critique in the Transcendental Logic.

The claim of the Aesthetic is that space and time are a priori intuitions. Knowledge is called a priori if it is “independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses” (B 2). Kant is not very precise about what this “independence” consists in. In the case of a priori judgments, it seems clear that being a priori implies that no particular facts verified by experience and observation are to be appealed to in their justification. Kant holds that necessity and universality are criteria of apriority in a judgment, and clearly this depends on the claim that appeal to facts of experience could not justify a judgment made as necessary and universal. Because Kant is quite consistent about what propositions he regards as a priori and about how he characterizes the notion, the absence of a more precise explanation has not led to its being regarded in commentary on Kant as one of his more problematic notions, even though a reader of today would be prepared at least to entertain the idea that the notion of a priori knowledge is either hopelessly unclear or vacuous.

THE CRITIQUE OF REASON

Whatever else a critique of reason attempts, it must surely criticize reason. Further, if it is not to point toward nihilism, a critique of reason cannot have only a negative or destructive outcome, but must vindicate at least some standards or principles as authorities on which thinking and doing may rely, and by which they may (in part) be judged. Critics of “the Enlightenment project” from Pascal to Horkheimer to contemporary communitarians and postmodernists, detect its Achilles' heel in arrant failure to vindicate the supposed standards of reason that are so confidently used to criticize, attack, and destroy other authorities, including church, state, and tradition. If the authority of reason is bogus, why should such reasoned criticism have any weight?

Suspicions about reason can be put innumerable ways. However, one battery of criticisms is particularly threatening, because it targets the very possibility of devising anything that could count as a vindication of reason. This line of attack is sometimes formulated as a trilemma. Any supposed vindication of the principles of reason would have to establish the authority of certain fundamental constraints on thinking or acting. However, this could only be done in one of three ways. A supposed vindication could appeal to the presumed principles of reason that it aims to vindicate - but would then be circular, so fail as vindication. Alternatively, it might be based on other starting points - but then the supposed principles of reason would lack reasoned vindication, so could not themselves bequeath unblemished pedigrees.

In the Transcendental Analytic Kant develops a characteristically striking - and at the same time characteristically elusive - conception of the causal relation. Thus, for example, in a preliminary section (13) to the transcendental deduction Kant introduces the problem by remarking that, with respect to the concept of cause, “it is a priori not clear why appearances should contain something of this kind” (A 90 / B 122); for, as far as sensibility is concerned, “everything could be situated in such disorder that, e.g., in the succession of appearances nothing offered itself that suggested a rule of synthesis - and thus would correspond to the concept of cause and effect - so that this concept would therefore be entirely empty, null, and without meaning” (A 90 / B 123). A memorable paragraph then follows:

THE ORIGINS OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH DYNASTY

The historical tradition preserved in the pages of Manetho's history allows three kings to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, Sabacon, Sebichos, and Tarcos, to be identified with Shabako, Shebitku, and Taharqa. These three are the middle monarchs of the five now generally included together to make the historical Twenty-fifth Dynasty of the monuments. Historians have expressed surprise that Manetho made no mention of Py (Piankhy), who established the fortunes of his line in Egypt, but his absence from the chronicler's list may be due more to a desire for chronological tidiness than to ignorance or malicious omission. For the greater part of his reign Py was absent from Egypt, and, as an earlier chapter of this history made clear, much of Egypt during this period was controlled by princes and chieftains, some of whom form, in Manetho's tradition, the lines of the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Dynasties. The overlap of dynastic lines presents problems to the annalistically-minded historian. To start the Twenty-fifth Dynasty with Shabako, who earned the royal title ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’ by extending Nubian rule over the whole land in about 713 B.C., was altogether neater.

Unfortunately, neatness is not customarily to be observed in the sequences of historical events. The narrative of a country's history is like a river which, from time to time along its course, is joined by tributaries. Each tributary represents a new stream which, to be fully understood, needs retracing back along its separate course.

Many topics have been lightly touched upon in the preceding chapters which merit special attention, and it is the purpose of this chapter to fulfil that need. A synthesis of our knowledge of a given aspect of Assyrian civilization is full of lacunae and surmise, and I advise the reader of this now, for I have spared him endless repetitions of such phrases as ‘It would seem that’ or ‘Possibly so’. These topics are usually treated for Assyria and Babylonia together in secondary works, and I have therefore stressed some of the major contrasts with Babylonian civilization.

THE MONARCHY

The idea of monarchy was born with the emergence of the Assyrian state and the two grew to maturity together like twins. The seed for these developments may be found in the ancient city state of Ashur and its ruler who was called a vice-regent (išši' akku) of the city god Ashur. When Shamshi-Adad I captured this city state, he sought acceptance by the indigenous population of himself as the legitimate ruler and at the same time, by conquering other city states in the region and assuming the imperialistic title šarru (‘king’), dramatically altered the previous course of Ashur's history and set for its people and their heirs highly ambitious goals. The idea of an Assyrian state under an absolute monarch was conceived at that moment but lay dormant until the time of Ashuruballit I (1363–1328 B.C.), who not only won Assyrian independence but laid the foundations of an Assyrian nation and an Assyrian monarchy.