Kant's Transcendental Deduction

An Analytical-Historical Commentary

Henry E. Allison

Close readings and critical analysis of a major text
Presents Kant's project in its own terms
An authoritative account by one of the world's most eminent Kant scholars

Kant's Transcendental Deduction

An Analytical-Historical Commentary

Henry E. Allison

Description

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem (refuting a global skepticism regarding the objectivity of experience), it addresses a new problem (the role of a priori concepts or categories stemming from the nature of the understanding in grounding this objectivity), and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. Allison locates four decisive steps in this process: the recognition that sensibility and understanding are distinct and irreducible cognitive powers, which Kant referred to as a 'great light' of 1769; the subsequent realization that, though distinct, these powers only yield cognition when they work together, which is referred to as the 'discursivity thesis' and which led directly to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments and the problem of the synthetic a priori; the discovery of the necessary unity of apperception as the supreme norm governing discursive cognition; and the recognition, through the influence of Tetens, of the role of the imagination in mediating between sensibility and understanding. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views, two distinctive features of Allison'sreading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary (the 'non-contingency thesis') and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism (the 'non-separability thesis').

Kant's Transcendental Deduction

An Analytical-Historical Commentary

Henry E. Allison

Note on Sources and Key to Abbreviations and Translations
Introduction
Chapter One :Kant's Analytic Metaphysics and Model of Cognition in the 1760s
1: The Writings of 1762-1764: The Prize Essay, Negative Magnitudes, and the Beweisgrund
2: Announcement of the Metaphysics Lectures of Winter 1764-1765 and Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766)
Chapter Two: Kant's Inaugural Dissertation and Its Context
1: The Differentiation of Directions in Space (1768) and the "Great Light" of 1769
2: The Inaugural Dissertation (1770)
Chapter Three: The "Silent Decade"
1: Kant's Letter to Herz of February 21, 1772 and Its Context
2: The Duisburg Nachlass
3: B 12 and Related Texts
Appendix to Chapter Three: Kant and Tetens
1: Kant's Reaction to Tetens' Work
2: A Comparison of Their Treatments of Some Common Themes
3: The Nature and Extent of Tetens' Direct Influence on Kant
Chaper Four: Setting the Stage
1: The Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding
2: The Introductory Section of the Transcendental Deduction (A84-95)
Chapter Five: The A-Deduction: Section 2
1: The Relation between the Subjective and the Objective Deductions
2: Section 2 of the A-Deduction (A95-114)
Chaper Six: The A-Deduction: Section 3
1: The Argument from above (A115-19)
2: The Argument from below (A119-30)
Chapter Seven: The Interlude
1: The Deduction in the Prolegomena
2: The Note on the Deduction in the Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
3: Reflexionen 5923-35
Chapter Eight: The B-Deduction (1): Sections 15-20
1: Section 15: On the Possibility of a Combination in General (B130-1)
2: Section 16: On the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception (B131-6)
3: Section 17: The Principle of the Synthetic Unity of Apperception Is the Supreme Principle of All Use of the Understanding (B136-6)
4: Section 18: What Objective Unity of Self-Consciousness Is (B139-40)
5: Section 19: The Logical Form of All Judgments Consists in the Objective Unity of the Apperception of the Concepts Contained Therein (B140-2)
6: Section 20: All Sensible Intuitions Stand under the Categories as Conditions under Which Alone Their Manifold Can Come Together in One Consciousness (B143)
Chapter Nine: The B-Deduction (2): Sections 21-7
1: Section 21: The Transition (B144-6)
2: Sections 22-3: The Restriction Thesis (B146-9)
3: Section 24 (the First Part): The Relation of the Categories to the Forms of Sensible Intuition through the Transcendental Synthesis of the Imagination (B150-2)
4: Section 24 (the Second Part) and Section 25: Inner Sense and Apperception (B152-9)
5: Section 26: Apprehension, Perception, and Experience (B159-65)
6: Section 27: A Recapitulation (B165-9)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Kant's Transcendental Deduction

An Analytical-Historical Commentary

Henry E. Allison

Author Information

Henry E. Allison, University of California, San Diego and Boston University

Henry E. Allison is Emeritus Professor of the University of California, San Diego, and Boston University. He is the author of many books, including Essays on Kant (OUP, 2012), Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (OUP, 2011), and Custom and Reason in Hume (OUP, 2008), and over seventy-five scholarly articles and reviews.

Kant's Transcendental Deduction

An Analytical-Historical Commentary

Henry E. Allison

Reviews and Awards

"The purpose of this book, by one of the foremost contemporary Kant scholars, is to advance a simultaneously 'analytic and historical' treatment of the most complex component of Kant's philosophy: the Transcendental Deduction ...One of the many virtues of his magisterial account is that by setting out the resources of the Deduction in such detail, we can now better evaluate its role in the actual arguments of the Critique." - Sacha Golob, Mind

"This book is, without a doubt, the most thorough and historically-informed commentary on the transcendental deduction available in the literature. There is simply no other work that provides such a close, detailed textual analysis of all versions of the deduction. Allison's magisterial command of the Kantian texts is deeply impressive." - A.B. Dickerson, Journal of the History of Philosophy