Abstract

Going back to Jacobi, commentators have often considered Kant’s notion of the transcendental object (thing in itself, monad, or object = X) to be concerned merely with empirical affection. Although most agree that this argument of Kant’s forbids the understanding from making illegitimate claims regarding the transcendental object, it is often assumed that no positive function can be ascribed to metaphysical illusions produced by reason. I will show in this paper, in contrast to most commentators, that a positive notion of transcendental illusion is brought about by the cooperation of the imagination and reason in the latter’s pursuit of positing transcendental objects––in the same way that the imagination aids the understanding in determining objects of empirical cognition. When describing reason’s pursuit of systematicity, Kant writes that the transcendent ideas serve as a focus imaginarius that unifies cognition as such (A644/B672). It is not merely the case that metaphysical illusions regarding the soul, the world as such, and God are entirely useless, just because the understanding is prohibited from claiming having knowledge of such concepts.I take it that the transcendental object so considered in Kant’s Dialectic refers only to a representation of the imagination. I show that all three transcendental ideas––namely, God, the World as such, and the soul––are imaginary projections of unity carried out by the power of reason. Drawing on Kant’s notion of the focus imaginarius, I claim that reason regards transcendental illusions as being real objects. This holds as much for the schema of scientific knowledge, which is merely regulative, as it does for the three transcendental ideas. Unlike most commentators, I do not take Kant’s consideration of the transcendental object to concern empirical affection. Rather, reason posits this object in order to transcend the limits of the understanding, and to thereby use its own inner illusions for systematic purposes (cf. A250–53 and A393). To my mind, reason necessarily posits ideas, but the imagination often leads reason into holding that the focus imaginarius of the idea is an actual object. The critical use of reason must then put limits on the imagination (cf. A770/B798). But the imagination nonetheless serves reason’s interest by allowing it to put otherwise negative illusions to work for the sake of systematicity.