Abstract

In this work the author gives a brief commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason which covers the Transcendental Aesthetic, Analytic and Dialectic. This work has as its goal the interpretation of this much of the Doctrine of Elements as it leads to a 'dilemma of reason' found in the antinomies, the expression of a fundamental human ignorance posed in the terms of the inability of reason to be satisfied with wholly 'finite' or 'infinite' answers to the demands of reason in its attempt to grasp the fundamental nature of the soul, the world, and the divine. Hence, the problematic form of reason in the Critique shows itself to be a result of a consciously Socratic task, a modern expression of the wisdom of Socrates, for reason learns that it knows that it does not know such final answers absolutely. ;This work treats the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic as being comprised of a series of appeals . Aside from the Transcendental Deduction of the categories, the author finds implicit in Kant similar deductions for the pure intuitions and the pure principles in the Aesthetic and System of Principles respectively. In each faculty there is an appeal from the empirical domain to the intelligible domain, that is, in the 'besetment of sensibility' the author traces Kant's general account of an appeal from empirical intuitions to pure intuitions; in the 'predicament of the understanding' the appeal is from empirical concepts to pure concepts; in the 'ambiguity of judgment' the appeal from empirical judgments to pure judgments is investigated. ;The final chapter entitled "The Dilemma of Reason" shows how all of the disproportions in the other faculties lead to the problematic nature of reason as it forms transcendental ideas for which there can be no corresponding object or intuition. It is suggested that the imagination provides the form of the nature of an intellectual intuition as it forms pure intuitions, schemata, and the transcendental ideas; hence, it is also suggested that this uninvestigated faculty might deserve a 'critique' of its own according to the author's original description of this faculty as it functions in the Critique.