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Kant’s ‘Five Ways’: Transcendental Idealism in Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2018

MURRAY MILES
MURRAY MILES*
Affiliation:
Brock University
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) explains the puzzling intuitus originarius/intellectus archetypus dichotomy, and (2) casts doubt on the received idea that Kant broke with the traditional theocentric model of cognition.

En 1772, Kant esquissa le nouveau problème de la phase dite «critique» de sa pensée en ébauchant quatre «voies» permettant de comprendre l’accord entre la connaissance et son objet. Cette étude développe l’ébauche de ces voies et les raisons pour lesquelles Kant les rejette toutes. Elle clarifie ainsi le contexte historique de la cinquième voie (celle de Kant lui-même), tout en (1) expliquant l’étrange dichotomie établie dans son œuvre entre un intuitus originarius et un intellectus archetypus et en (2) mettant en doute la thèse d’une rupture radicale d’avec le modèle théocentrique de la connaissance.

Keywords

cognitionintellectual intuitionCopernicanismtheocentric modelanthropocentrismtranscendental idealism
Type
Original Article/Article original
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 137 - 161
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Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

1

References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the pagination of the original editions of 1781 and 1787, designated ‘A’ and ‘B,’ respectively. The translations are those of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992-), edited by Paul Guyer and Alan Wood. Translations of Kant’s other works follow the same edition, though the page references are to volume and page number of the standard German edition of Kant’s works (printed in the margins of The Cambridge Edition), Kants Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königliche Preußische (later Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: Georg Reimer (later Walter de Gruyter), 1900-.Square brackets in the text of a quotation indicate interpolations by the author, while ‘e.a.’ after a reference stands for ‘emphasis added.’

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