Seminar: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

PHIL 6100      Spring 2012       Call # 15449

 

Instructor:                   Dr. Kent Baldner (baldner@wmich.edu)

Class:                          W:  2:00—4:430; 4209 Dunbar

Office Hours:              MWR: 12:00—1:00, Moore Hall 3013

Office Phone:              387‑4402

Required Text:            Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Paul Guyer and Andrew W. Wood, Cambridge University Press

Suggested:                   Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (from Bennett’s site)

Web Resources:          Jonathan Bennett’s excellent Early Modern Philosophy; Selections (from Bennett) from Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and Kant

 

In this class we will read a major portion of Kant’s monumental Critique of Pure Reason.  (Here is a brief outline of the main sections of the Critique.)At the same time, we will read parallel sections of his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.  (The Prolegomena is what I like to call the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Critique.)  Depending on our interests as we get going, I may assign some published papers on Kant.

 

 

Grading:  Grades will be based upon in class participation, 5 short textual assignments, an in-class presentation, and a final paper.  We will work out the details as we proceed.

 

 

Class Schedule:

 

Week 1:  1/11

General Introduction

Notes on the introductory lecture.

 

 

Week 2:  1/18

Notes on Kant’s discussion of synthetic a priori knowledge in the Introduction to the Critique

Lecture Notes on the Prefaces

A table comparing Hume’s Relations of Ideas vs. Matters of Fact to Kant’s analytic vs. synthetic and a priori vs. a posteriori

 

 

Week 3:  1/25

Beginning Discussion of the Transcendental Aesthetic

Main divisions of the Critique

My diagram of the structure of Erkenntnis (i.e., “cognition”)

Here is an example of an assignment I gave in the past, with my answer.

 

 

 

Week 4:  1/30

Luke’s Presentation of Kant’ arguments about Space and Time

Final class discussion of the Aesthetic:

·      Do you have questions/comments about Kant’s claim that space and time are the pure forms of intuition?

·      Questions/comments about how this is supposed to make possible synthetic a priori knowledge of arithmetic and geometry.

·      Questions/comments about what it meant to say that space and time are “empirically real and transcendentally ideal.”

Preliminary discussion of the transition to “Transcendental Logic”

First Textual Assignment, due today

My answer to this assignment

 

 

Week 5:  2/8

The Transcendental Deduction, pp. 219—266 (We won’t cover all this one class!)

My notes, “From Transcendental Logic to Transcendental Deduction”

Second Textual Assignment, due 2/15

Notes on the Transcendental Deduction

 

 

Week 6:  2/15

            We will focus on completing our discussion of the Transcendental Deductions

            Passages (mostly) from A Deduction, with my comments

            Passages from the B Deduction, with my comments

            My answer to the Second Textual Assignment (Coming soon!)

 

 

Week 7:  2/22

            Review: Any further comments/discussion about transcendental apperception?

New material: Pages 267- 295

Some notes (from a previous semester) on the Axioms and Anticipations

            Third Textual Assignment, due 3/8/2012

 

Week 8:  2/29

            Review: Any further comments/discussion about the Axioms and Anticipations?

            New material: pp. 295—321

            Some notes from a previous semester on moving from the Transcendental Deduction to the Analogies of Experience

 

 

(Spring Break 3/7)

 

 

Week 9:  3/14

My answer to Third Textual Assignment

The Analogies, again

 

 

Week 10:  3/21

Fourth Paralogism (1st edition) and “Refutation of Idealism” (second edition)

Fourth Textual Assignment

 

Week 11:  3/28

Refutation of Idealism (second edition)

Transcendental Idealism, Transcendental Realism, and the “Two Object” reading

Fifth Textual Assignment

            Fifth Assignment—My Answer

 

Week 12:  4/4

Phenomena and Noumena

Sixth Textual Assignment

            Sixth Assignment—My Answer

 

Week 13:  4/11

A quick review of Phenomena and Noumena

Kant’s conception of God, and refutation of the “Ontological Argument”

 

 

Week 14:  4/18

My two papers:

“Causality and Things in Themselves,” Synthese, vol. 77, 1988

“Is Transcendental Idealism Coherent,” Synthese, vol. 85, 1990

 

 

 

Week 15:  4/25 

Final exam week.  Papers due 4/25.

 

 

 

Secondary Sources:

 

H. J. Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, Volume 1

H. J. Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, Volume 2

Norman Kemp-Smith’s Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

 

 

 

Some of my papers on Kant:

 

“Causality and Things in Themselves,” Synthese, vol. 77, 1988

“Is Transcendental Idealism Coherent,” Synthese, vol. 85, 1990

“Subjectivity and the Unity of the World,” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 46, 1996

“Transcendental Idealism and the Fact/Value Dichotomy,” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, vol. 3, 1995

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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