Unveiling Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories

Abstract

Kant attempts to establish a correlation between the unity of self-consciousness and the experience of an objectively valid world in the “Transcendental Deduction” of the Critique of Pure Reason. For this purpose, he plots a sophisticated proof which contains sub-arguments and several aspects. This study focuses in the extended analysis of the central argument exposed in the first half of the “Transcendental Deduction” of the second edition. Some of the argumentation strategies adopted by Kant and the interpretations of the prominent commentators corresponding to these approaches are compared. For the ease of the analysis, the content of the argument is disassembled into main and side components. Detailed explanations are provided for each of these components. Although they receive relatively less attention of scholars, in this study the side features are considered to have significant contributions to the overall comprehension of the deduction. I suggest that concerning them in the relevant interpretations will help to get a better insight of the text. Some additional supportive accounts are also supplied for Henry Allison’s ‘reciprocity’ reading of the deduction.