Kant's Reason: The Unity of Reason and the Limits of Comprehension in Kant

Kant's Reason presents a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance, arguing that it presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. It also argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 22 August 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Kant's Reason presents a groundbreaking interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer contends that Kant offers a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or comprehension). This model enables us to honor the profound commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality without reducing either to the other. Specifically, it allows us to comprehend why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also recognizing why reason is essentially autonomous.

At the same time, Kant's Reason interprets Kant as presenting a compelling portrayal of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it advocates for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics.

In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.

Weight: 588g
Dimension: 165 x 242 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192868534