Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On the Status of “Things-in-Themselves” in Kant's Critical Philosophy
- 2 Kant on Noumenal Causality
- 3 Kant's Cognitive Anthropocentrism
- 4 Kant on Cognitive Systematization
- 5 Kant's Teleological Theology
- 6 Kant on the Limits and Prospects of Philosophy
- 7 On the Reach of Pure Reason in Kant's Practical Philosophy
- 8 On the Rationale of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- 9 On the Unity of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- Notes
- Name Index
4 - Kant on Cognitive Systematization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On the Status of “Things-in-Themselves” in Kant's Critical Philosophy
- 2 Kant on Noumenal Causality
- 3 Kant's Cognitive Anthropocentrism
- 4 Kant on Cognitive Systematization
- 5 Kant's Teleological Theology
- 6 Kant on the Limits and Prospects of Philosophy
- 7 On the Reach of Pure Reason in Kant's Practical Philosophy
- 8 On the Rationale of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- 9 On the Unity of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- Notes
- Name Index
Summary
1. SYSTEMATICITY IN KANT
The concept of “system” is perhaps the most portentous idea of Kant's theory of knowledge. For he saw systematization as the pivotal and determinative commitment of (pure) human reason - the quintessential instrumentality through which alone rational human inquiry can realize its key objective, the scientific knowledge of nature. Without this recourse to system, the Critique of Pure Reason would be like Hamlet without the prince.
The present discussion seeks to explicate and sustain this thesis of the centrality of system and to elucidate, largely in Kant's own words, the role of system in the Kantian scheme. Such an examination of the system-oriented aspects of his theory of knowledge is particularly worthwhile, because studies of Kant have generally failed to accord to systematization the pride of place that is its due. The fact is that the concept of system plays much the same governing role in the cognitive deliberations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality play in the ethical deliberations of his Critique of Practical Reason or the conception of divinely instituted purposiveness in nature in the value-oriented deliberations of his Critique of Judgment.
2. WHAT A COGNITIVE SYSTEM IS
Kant maintains that the mission of systematization is the organization of knowledge, its coordination into one coherent structure under the guiding aegis of unifying principles.
If we consider in its whole range the knowledge obtained for us by the understanding, we find that what is peculiarly distinctive of reason in its attitude to this body of knowledge, is that it prescribes and seeks to achieve its systematization, that is, to exhibit the connection of its parts in conformity with a single principle. This unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely, that of the form of a whole of knowledge - a whole which is prior to the determinate knowledge of the parts and which contains the conditions that determine a priori for every part its position and relation to the other parts. This idea accordingly postulates a complete [organic] unity in the knowledge obtained by understanding by which this knowledge is to be not a mere contingent aggregate, but a system connected according to necessary laws.
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- Information
- Kant and the Reach of ReasonStudies in Kant's Theory of Rational Systematization, pp. 64 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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