The Relationship Between Formal and Transcendental-Metaphysical Logic According to Kant

Abstract

What is the relationship between formal, general logic and transcendental logic? Is the former prior to the latter or is it the other way round? Can the one be deduced and derived from the other or based upon it? There is a widespread controversy among philosophers concerning these questions.1 In any case, most of them accept the assumption that one of these logics should be prior to the other. As for me, I don't accept this assumption at all, and in this paper I attempt to show that such a priority is impossible, since the two logics are but different uses or employments of the under standing {Verstand). Kant apeaks of the unity of human reason (Vernunft), the pure theoretical reason and the pure practical reason. The difference between the two is but that of a use or an employment (Gebrauch or Anwendung).2 Two uses can be made of the reason. By 'reason' I mean the whole scope of the a priori forms?of intuitions, concepts (categories), principles, ideas, imperatives etc., all of which should be united coherently and organically in one system. Hence, by 'reason' I mean the four components of reason in the wide sense: the a priori forms of sensation, understanding, power of judge ment and Reason in its strict sense, as the faculty of ideas. Kant has to prove, therefore, that the unity of each of these components (e.g., of the power of judgement) is not broken down by its different uses (in this example, the reflective use?the teleological use of judgement?and the constitutive use? in the schematism of categories by time). In any case, it seems that Kant has failed to prove the unity of the practical and the theoretical use of reason, and all his attempts to display the same components of reason in his First and Second Critiques are nothing but an unconvincing attempt to solve the problem by bureaucratical devices such as forced analogies, far-fetched ex amples etc. Actually, the analogy between the structures of the two reasons is quite artificial: what have the dialectic of pure reason and that of the practical reason really in common? On the other hand, there is room for a more con vincing analogy such as that between the autonomy of practical reason and the autonomy of reason concerning the sublime (in the Third Critique). Be that as it may, our problem here is whether the two uses of the human understanding3?the general, analytical use (employment) qua formal logic and the specific synthetic use qua transcendental logic?are but two