Reasonable Ideas: Metaphysics and Meta-metaphysics in Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic

The ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has long been discussed primarily in terms of the metaphysical criticism it contains. Following more recent developments in Kant research, this project aims to draw a more differentiated picture of Kant's attitude towards metaphysics in order to do justice to the fact that Kant sees its objects and principles as founded in the structure of human reason itself and considers certain forms of an affirmative attitude towards it to be permissible and even indispensable. The project will focus on Kant's meta-metaphysical question of how the representational, epistemic and doxastic reference to the objects of pure reason is possible. For example, it will be reconstructed how Kant derives the content of the transcendental ideas of soul, world and God as concepts of the unconditioned from the structure of theoretical reason and its need for metaphysical explanation. And it will be investigated whether Kant's subtle differentiation between various epistemic and doxastic attitudes allows for a not purely negative attitude towards the objects of these ideas without violating the limits of knowledge drawn by Kant himself.
The results of these considerations will also be explained paradigmatically using selected cases, with particular attention being paid to Kant's statements on metaphysical aspects of mereology and on the principle of continuous determination in the chapter on the ‘ideal’. The aim of the project is to gain an exegetically appropriate understanding of Kant's critique and reinterpretation of the theses of traditional metaphysics, and thereby also to reveal the potential of Kant's theory for various debates in contemporary metaphysics and meta-metaphysics.