Unlike earlier attempts to prove the completeness of the table of judgments, this book takes the fundamental position that an answer can only be found in the context of a basic interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason that encompasses the metaphysical and transcendental deduction of the categories and ideas, the role played by cognitive capacity, transcendental apperception, and the theory of affects.

For a long time, the transcendental dialectic was not at the center of Kant scholarship but was often treated simply as Kant’s reckoning with contemporary metaphysics. Accordingly, the main interest was in the transcendental analytic, especially the transcendental deduction. It is all the more gratifying that in recent times a rethinking seems to be taking place on this issue. In the following, I shall attempt to show why the transcendental dialectic is something more than an addendum to the core business (...) of the Critique of Pure Reason. Rather, it forms the culmination of the work, demanding our full attention. Indeed, it provides the key to the entire critical philosophy by exhibiting reason itself as the ultimate founding principle in the form of its Idea. (shrink)

This paper examines the underdetermined relation between the absolute and absolute knowledge. Fichte not only claimed that he provided the correct reading of Kant’s critical philosophy but also that his Wissenschaftslehre constructively addressed and resolved its systematic problems. By discussing Kant’s notion of a “transcendental substrate” and its relation to the “thing-in-itself” it will be shown that this claim has to be taken seriously even from a Kantian standpoint. Moreover, it will be shown that Fichte's critical assessment of Kant's philosophy (...) at the beginning of his second private lecture on the Wissenschaftslehre given in Berlin in 1804 and his philosophical reflection of the highest principle of all knowing and its relation to the absolute can be understood as a solution to problems that historically originated with Kant and were left unsettled by him. (shrink)

Topic of the essay is the central philosophical question of Buddhism of the onto- and epistemological status of the true self. Based on the Kantian critique of the psychologia rationalis concerning the doctrine of the soul I argue in favor that the doctrine of the non-self of the Anattavāda should be interpreted in an apophatic way. This interpretation sustains the so-called “old-buddhistic doctrine” of Georg Grimm after which the essence of buddhistic thoughts on the true self lies in its unknowability (...) and its inexpressibility, but not in its non-existence.Das Thema des Aufsatzes ist die zentrale philosophische Frage des Buddhismus nach dem onto- und epistemologischen Status des wahren Selbst. Ausgehend von der kantischen Kritik der Seelenlehre der psychologia rationalis wird dafür plädiert, die Lehre des Nicht-Selbst des Anattavādas als Apophatik im Sinne der sog. „altbuddhistischen Lehre“ Georg Grimms zu deuten, welche die Unerkennbarkeit und Unaussprechlichkeit des wahren Selbst zum Inhalt hat, nicht jedoch dessen Inexistenz. (shrink)