Imagination and schematism in the second edition of Kants critique of Pura reason

• Grant number: 15/18904-9
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal researcher: Maurício Cardoso Keinert
• Grantee: André Rodrigues Ferreira Perez
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Kants answer to the fundamental question of the transcendental philosophy "how are synthetic judgements a priori possible" will depend on the possibility of correlation between our two knowledge stems: sensibility and understanding. This correlation stands on a fundamental distinction that will beacon all our use of the last: the distinction between mater and form - that is: between that which may be determinable and that which determines it. However, as we shall see, the separation of understanding and intuition implies two different ways of relation with the matter, in other words, two different conceptions of form - of which will depend the possibility of experience. Said in a different way, the experience, insofar as it is empirical knowledge, that is, knowledge from connected perceptions, can only be possible if we can, from formal elements of intuition and understanding, determine a empircal intuition object - in other words: submit phenomena to geral rules of synthesis found in the categories. Kant seems to solutionate this problem in two moments: first, at the end of the transcendental deduction when he introduces the imagination (or the power to imagine - Einbildungskraft); in second place, in the first chapter of the Analytic of Principles when he introduces the transcendental schema as a mediating element between the capacitys of understanding and sensibility. As we shall see, the relation of this two moments is not without complications. Our analysis therefore will fallow three steps: first, a reflection about form and matter - in the Aesthetic than in the Analytic of Concepts; in second place, we must analyze the role that imagination occupies according to what Kant expounded; finally, we will see how he tries do resolve this problem whit the doctrine of schematismus. (AU)