1 - Reason, Hope, and Territory

Summary

This chapter argues that the interpretative master key of the third Critique key can be located in the related concepts of hope and territory. It develops reason’s demand for the unconditioned along with the requirement for its self-consistency as the driving force behind the need for hope. What we hope for is that our free, rational activity will be efficacious in the natural order, and contribute to bringing about a rational world order as demanded by reason. The chapter then turns to consider what hope itself is, as simultaneously theoretical and practical. It moves next to how hope is answered in Kant’s philosophy by way of judgments that we make “out in the territory.” The territory, I argue, completes Kant’s system insofar as it both underlies as well as serves as a transitional sphere between freedom and nature. Lastly, I consider how the system that Kant envisions here, along with our encounters out in the territory, may work to recast Kant’s Copernican turn and give human beings a sense of belonging to a larger, more cosmic nature than previously articulated in Kant’s writings.