Abstract
AbstractIn his Kant on Laws, Eric Watkins presents an account of reason on which the principles of specification and continuity are regulative instructions to search for different kinds of the unconditioned. I suggest that we correct Watkins’ account in two ways. First, we need to complete Watkins’ claim to the plurality of the unconditioned: reason aims for three kinds of the unconditioned, associated with the lowest, next and highest concepts. Second, we need to look beyond reason’s search for the unconditioned in order to properly understand the nature of the aim of reason. I argue that we construe reason’s aim as the systematic unity of cognition considered as a whole or, in Kant’s teleological terms, as the realization of an ‘idea’, or a ‘purposive unity’.
Highlights
Eric Watkins’ Kant on Laws (Watkins ) is an impressive achievement
Beyond the insights revealed by the individual chapters, Watkins shows that there is an underlying unity to Kant’s thinking about laws, and – since laws play such a fundamental role in Kant’s philosophy – to Kant’s thinking as a whole
I restrict myself, in particular, to comments on the regulative principles that Watkins discusses in part IV
Summary
Eric Watkins’ Kant on Laws (Watkins ) is an impressive achievement. I restrict myself, in particular, to comments on the regulative principles that Watkins discusses in part IV. In chapter , ‘Kant on Infima Species’, he examines a set of prima facie metaphysical principles, the no lowest species and no species claims that Kant puts forward in the Lectures on Logic.
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