Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason: the ‘Transcendental Deduction’”

Lecturer: Dragoș Grusea (National University of Arts, Bucharest)

E-mail: dragos.grusea@unarte.org

The „transcendental deduction” from the Critique of Pure Reason can be regarded as the starting point for all the great post-Kantian theoretical constructions. Hegel’s speculative logic begins with the subject-object identity thematized in the deduction, the romantic philosophy of nature begins with the kantian idea that the form of nature is identical to the form of consciousness, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus reformulates the general theorem of the deduction, Carnap’s theory of constitution in the Aufbau extends the transcendental idea of the constitution of experience, and the ecstatic temporality in Being and Time deepens the way in which Kant understands the genesis of time in the deduction. Transcendental philosophy, whose core is the deduction, also points backward to Greek philosophy. Schelling concludes in one of his commentaries on Plato that the transcendental deduction is a return to the Timaeus and its cosmology.

In this seminar, we will go through the text of the deduction very slowly to gain a detailed understanding of the core of all transcendental philosophy and to approach the idea of philosophy as a system. The aim is to reconstruct, step by step, the path Kant takes from the simple apprehension of impressions to the formal structure of nature. Throughout the reading, we will draw on Schelling’s suggestion and frequently return to the Timaeus to interpret the transcendental deduction as a transcendental cosmology.