Abstract

Kant, as any student of the Critique of Pure Reason will know, is a transcendental idealist. It is of course a commonplace of Kant-interpretation that transcendental idealism is basic to Kant's theory of knowledge. But Paul Guyer, in Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, proposes a revisionist thesis on this score. The thesis can be expressed in five parts: that idealism is a very implausible and indefensible aspect of Kant's epistemology; that Kant's official version of transcendental epistemology entails idealism; that there is nevertheless a certain weaker transcendental theory--a "transcendental theory of experience"--which can be interpretatively elicited from Kant's published and unpublished works; that the transcendental theory of experience is essentially realistic and not idealistic; and that the transcendental theory of experience represents the essence of Kant's epistemology.