KANT’S SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF HUMAN REASON KANT’S THREE QUESTIONS KANT’S THREE CRITIQUES KANT’S THREE STUDIES OF HIGHER HUMAN FACULTIES
KantThe Identification of Apriori Principles in Human Faculties Three Higher Faculties Above Sensibility A faculty has a “higher form” – and hence is the subject of a critique of reason – if and only if it finds in itself the law of its own exercise. When it has such a priori principles, it is autonomous.
What Can I Know?	What Can I Hope For?	What Must I do?
What is knowledge?	What is art?	What is morality?
Epistemology	Aesthetics	Ethics
The study of how one knows	The study of art	The study of what one ought to do
What “faculty” or “source of representations” or “mode of presentation” must Kant then analyze?
FACULTY OF KNOWLEDGE (Cognition)	FACULTY OF FEELING (pleasure)	FACULTY OF DESIRE (Will)
Representation related to object from the standpoint of its agreement to, or conformity with, the object	Representation is related to the subject, insofar as it affects the subject by intensifying or weakening its vital force	Representation enters into a causal relationship with its object: “The faculty which, by virtue of its representations, becomes the cause of the reality of the objects of these representations”
Mind-to-World Direction of fit (conform mind to fit world) Descriptive content	Double Direction of fit?	World-to-mind Direction of fit (conform world to fit mind) Prescriptive content
FACULTY OF KNOWLEDGE (Cognition)	FACULTY OF FEELING (pleasure)	FACULTY OF DESIRE (Will)
The fundamental question raised by a critique of a human faculty is whether or not there are synthetic truths that can be known a priori within that faculty
Is there a higher form of knowledge?	Is there a higher form of feeling?	Is there a higher form of desire?
Critique of Pure Reason 1781	Critique of Judgment 1790	Critique of Practical Reason 1788
Theoretical Rationality	Aesthetic Rationality	Practical Rationality
Understanding is law-giver or legislator to nature	Judgment is law-giver to feeling	Reason is law-giver or legislator to the will/self
Understanding is legislative or normative		Reason is legislative or normative
“Legislation by natural concepts is that in which the understanding, determining these concepts, legislates in the faculty of knowledge or in the speculative interest of reason: its domain is that of phenomena as object of all possible experience, in so far as they form a sensible nature” (CCP, 31)	“The capacity for feeling pleasure and displeasure, associated with judgment, as mediating between cognition, which is based on the faculty of understanding, and desire, which is based on the faculty of reason, through the concept of purposiveness” (KCPJ, xi)	“Legislation by the concept of freedom is that in which reason, determining this concept, legislates in the faculty of desire, that is to say, in its own practical interests; its domain is that of things in themselves thought as noumena, in so far as they form suprasensible nature” (CCP, 31)
Nature		Freedom
Metaphysic of Nature		Metaphysic of Morals
Proper role of imagination is to synthesize and schematize under the direction of the understanding (Verstand)		Proper role of imagination it to serve reason and to symbolize its rational ideas
Verstand		Vernunft
Determining Judgment: The Concept of given as concept of the understanding in order to subsume particular		Determining Judgment: The Concept is given as a law of reason in order to subsume particular
Understanding applies general laws to particulars given in sensibility
Ability to cognize concrete cases of abstract concepts or principles
Faculty of the understanding: Normative or legislative in the domain of nature		Faculty of reason: Normative or legislative in the domain of freedom
Nature as the domain of appearances (Erscheinungen) or the sensible		Freedom as the domain of things in themselves or the suprasensible
THE SCIENTIST	THE ARTIST	THE JUDGE