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The ‘Perfected System of Criticism’: Schopenhauer's Initial Disagreements with Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2012

Matthias Kossler
Matthias Kossler*
Affiliation:
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
*
Email: kossler@uni-mainz-de
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Abstract

I would like to know who of my

contemporaries should be more competent in

Kantian philosophy than me.

(Schopenhauer in a letter to Rosenkranz and Schubert, 18371)

In this paper the attempt is made to show how Schopenhauer's critique of Kant leads from initial disagreements to a fundamental modification, even a new formation, of the Kantian concepts of understanding, reason, imagination, perception, idea and thing-in-itself. The starting point and the core of his critique is the demand for the appreciation of intuitive knowledge which is apart from and independent of reason. The intuitive knowledge goes back to images and its highest form is aesthetic contemplation. Without a participation of concepts it is sufficient to explain objective reality. Particularly on the basis of Schopenhauer's critical examination of Kant's schematism it can be shown that his alternative conception of an image-based objectivity of experience is to be taken seriously, even if the way he presents it sometimes gives the impression of a mere misunderstanding of Kant's theory of cognition.

Keywords

better consciousnesscausalitycontemplationimaginationschematism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 459 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2012

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