Abstract

The author briskly gives the principles of criticism which he will follow in examining Kant's theory of time, and the distinctions between absolute time, psychological time, and the duration of events and processes which must be made in order to deal with the time theories of Kant and his great predecessors Newton and Leibniz and their defenders. Al-Azm then follows Kant's writings from 1747 through his brief conversion to the Newtonian "receptacle" theory, through the critical period. He considers the Dissertation of 1770, at least in so far as it deals with space and time, to belong to the latter. The principles of criticism are especially relevant to Al-Azm's interpretation of Kant's time doctrine in the critical period. He holds that we must carefully bear in mind Kant's alternation of analytic and synthetic methods, and their dialectic interplay. If we do so, we can explain away the "patchwork" theory of Kemp Smith and others, as the obscurities and apparent inconsistencies and paradoxes which are resolvable in the light of the roles played for Kant by the approaches he employs. Within the first Critique, the teachings on time in the Aesthetic and the Analytic constitute a "genuine dialectic of a highly complex order." Thus, Kant's final position should be sought in the progressive modifications of the preliminary position. Al-Azm regards the Aesthetic as offering merely provisional statements on the subject of time, reached by a process of analysis, at an early dialectical stage, and offering a starting point for a fresh stage in analysis which aims "at the unveiling of the synthetic processes of the understanding." This is accomplished in the Analytic. In a last section, on the first Antinomy, the author considers Strawson's essay, The Bounds of Sense, published in 1966, and cites passages which he feels defend Kant's theory of time, seen in its relation to the critical philosophy, as successfully against Strawson's interpretation as against the claims of its Leibnizian and Newtonian rivals.--M. B. M.