We are glad to give notice of the release of the volume The Bounds of Transcendental Logic by Dennis Schulting (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Introduction
The book addresses two main areas of Kant’s theoretical philosophy: the doctrine of transcendental idealism and various central aspects of the arguments from the Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions, as well as the relation between the deduction argument and idealism. Among the topics covered are the nature of objective validity, the role and function of transcendental logic in relation to general or formal logic, the possibility of contradictory thoughts, the meaning of the Leitfaden at A79 and the unity of cognition, the two-steps-in-one-proof interpretation and categorial instantiation, categorial illusion, Strawson’s transcendental argument, the persistently perplexing question of the derivation of the categories, and the relation between apperception, objectivity, judgement, and idealism. With regard to idealism in particular, the focus is on the metaphysical two-aspect interpretation and its problems, on the merits and demerits of the controversial phenomenalist reading of Kant’s idealism, and on the topic of subjectivism and epistemic humility. In all of the aforementioned topics, the book presents wholly novel interpretations compared to the standard or mainstream interpretations.
In this book, Dennis Schulting provides robust responses to his critics and sheds important critical light upon recent developments in Kant scholarship, in particular on issues concerning his idealism and transcendental logic. Writing with his usual combination of precision and elegance, his views often involve positioning himself between opposing factions, in the spirit of Kant’s own critical stance. He also exorcises a number of concerns that regularly resurface in Kant scholarship. This book thus goes a long way in assuaging the uneasiness that phenomenalism instils among many, and the worry that there is still a gap in the Transcendental Deduction that needs to be bridged.
Christian Onof, Reader, Imperial College London, and Honorary Fellow in Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London.
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