Abstract
I argue for a novel, non-subjectivist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental
idealism. Kant’s idealism is often interpreted as specifying how we must
experience objects or how objects must appear to us. I argue to the
contrary by appealing to Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. Kant’s Deduction
is the proof that the categories are not merely subjectively necessary
conditions we need for our cognition, but objectively valid conditions
necessary for objects to be appearances. My interpretation centres on two
claims. First, Kant’s method of self-knowledge consists in his determining
what makes our cognitive faculty finite in contrast to God’s infinite cognitive
faculty. Second, Kant’s limitation of our knowledge to appearances consists
in his developing an account according to which appearances and our finite
cognitive faculty are conceived of in terms of each other and in contrast to
noumena in the positive sense and God’s infinite cognitive faculty.