Project: Immanuel Kant’s Deduction of the Categories of Quantity as a Stepping Stone to Exploring the Relation between Transcendental and Formal Logic and their respective Metaphysical Implications

2020-11-01 – 2024-10-31

Abstract

For many years there have been discussions about how exactly Immanuel Kant’s categories of quantity should be derived from the quantitative forms of judgment. This research proposal aims to connect this debate, which we call the "Derivation Controversy," to an analysis of the distinction between formal and transcendental logic, as well as to an analysis of the relation between logic and metaphysics in Kant's philosophy. The debate is characterized by a remarkable presence of realist suppositions. In light of Kant's transcendental idealist project, we deem this observation worrisome. Due to this realist turn of the debate the idea of the 'constitution of the object' has been increasingly disconnected from research into the nature of the categories and into Kant's transcendental logic in general. We develop a methodological framework for re-integrating the idea of object-constitution in analyses of transcendental logic, and hence also in the Derivation Controversy. Our methodology culminates in the contention (i) that transcendental logic, although general in nature, also needs to anticipate a singular use of the categories and (ii) that this is reflected by the derivation of the category of totality from the singular judgment. This will be investigated by way of the idea that an account of the specificity of the Kantian logical system must include an analysis of its metaphysical implications.