Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics

This book sheds light on Kant's claim that the Critique of Pure Reason is a 'treatise' or 'doctrine' of method.

Gabriele Gava (Author)

9781009172103, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 May 2023

310 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

'This is an interesting, ambitious and hugely impressive work that concerns the crucial and under-explored question of the methodology at play in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Gava's careful and extensive analysis puts the relationship between Kant's notions of 'transcendental philosophy' and a 'critique of pure reason' in a new light, one that will be of interest to anyone working on Kant's metaphysics and epistemology today.' John Callanan, King's College London

In two often neglected passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant submits that the Critique is a 'treatise' or a 'doctrine of method'. These passages are puzzling because the Critique is only cursorily concerned with identifying adequate procedures of argument for philosophy. In this book, Gabriele Gava argues that these passages point out that the Critique is the doctrine of method of metaphysics. Doctrines of method have the task of showing that a given science is indeed a science because it possesses 'architectonic unity' – which happens when it realizes the 'idea' of a science. According to Gava's novel approach, the Critique establishes that metaphysics is capable of this unity, and his reading of the Critique from this perspective not only illuminates the central role of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method within it, but also clarifies the relationship between the different parts of the work.

Introduction
Part I. Metaphysics as a Science and the Role of the Critique of Pure Reason: 1. The Worldly Concept of Philosophy and the Possibility of Metaphysics as a Science
2. The Critique of Pure Reason as the Doctrine of Method of Metaphysics
Part II. The Method of Transcendental Philosophy: 3. Metaphysical Deductions
4. Transcendental Deductions
Part III. The Method of the Critique of Pure Reason: 5. The Negative Side of the Critique of Pure Reason
6. Transcendental Philosophy and the Critique of Pure Reason in the B-Deduction
7. The Positive Side of the Critique of Pure Reason
Part IV. Kant on Dogmatism and Scepticism: 8. Kant on Wolff and Dogmatism
9. Kant on Hume and Scepticism.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]