The relation between the Idea of Systematic Unity and the Analogies of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason

• Grant number: 24/20928-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Monique Hulshof
• Grantee: João Pedro Montandon Hokama
• Supervisor: Marcus Willaschek
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/01189-4 - Kants Idea of Systematic Unity and its relation with experience, BP.MS

Abstract

In the Appendix of Transcendental Dialectic, Kant affirms that the assumption of the transcendental principle of systematic unity is necessary for the possibility of experience. However, as Willaschek remarks, if the assumption of the transcendental principle of systematic unity is to be regarded also as a necessary condition for the possibility of experience, this assertion must not contradict the claim of the Transcendental Analytic, according to which the grounding the possibility of experience was an aim achieved by the activity of understanding and its pure concepts over the a priori manifold of intuition. How can both claims be conciliated? I would like to suggest that the expression "making experience possible" can have at least two meanings, and the unadvertised conflation of these two meanings makes it hard to see how Kant can state that a principle of reason can perform a role in "making experience possible". The first sense of the expression refers to experience regarding its formal aspect; in the second sense, experience is mobilized in its material aspect. If we are to have any empirical knowledge regarding the effective objective of experience, it is necessary that experience, both in its material and formal sense, were made possible.