Transcendental idealism

Transcendental idealism is a doctrine founded by 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant which was influential in much subsequent German philosophy. Despite this influence, it was a subject of some debate amongst 20th century philosophers exactly how to interpret this doctrine, which Kant first describes in his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant distinguished his view from contemporary views of realism and idealism, but philosophers are not agreed upon what difference Kant draws.

P. F. Strawson

In The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson suggests a reading of Kant's first Critique which rejects most of its arguments, including transcendental idealism. Strawson views the analytic argument of the transcendental deduction as the most valuable idea in the text, determining transcendental idealism to be a great but unavoidable error in Kant's system. In this traditional reading (also favored in the work of Paul Guyer and Rae Langton), the Kantian term phenomena (literally something that can be seen from the Greek word phainomenon, "observable") refers to the world of appearances, or the sensible. The necessary preconditions of experience, such as space and time, are what make a priori judgements possible, but all of this only applies to human sensibility. Kant's system requires the existence of noumena to prevent a rejection of external reality altogether, and it is this concept (senseless objects of which we can have no real understanding) to which Strawson objects in his book.

Related Topics:
The Bounds of Sense - P. F. Strawson - Paul Guyer - Rae Langton - Phenomena - Greek - Space and time - A priori - Noumena

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