The eighteenth-century German rationalist tradition is, broadly speaking, committed to (what I call) ‘the principle of rational cognition’: the grounded must be rationally cognizable from its sufficient ground. Whereas the prevailing view takes the fundamental challenge to rationalist paradise to stem from the principle of sufficient reason, I argue that it instead stems from this principle: How is it possible to rationally cognize anything at all from its ground? By investigating the opposing responses of two of Leibniz’s most influential immediate successors, Christian Wolff and Christian Crusius, we find no easy way to remain in rationalist paradise.
What awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber? On the traditional narrative, he was awakened by Hume's challenge to our cognition of causal connections. A more recent narrative claims that he was awakened by Hume's challenge to our cognition of non‐logical connections more generally. In this paper, I argue that a key part of Kant's awakening was far wider‐reaching: he came to realize that all dogmas must be abandoned. An oft‐overlooked technical notion, dogmas are non‐logical principles cognizable to unaided human reason. I detail how Kant repudiated dogmas by the mid‐1760's in engaging with his German predecessor, Christian Crusius. This repudiation lays the foundation for his critical project. For once liberated of dogmas, reason must look beyond itself for the principles that would enable rational cognitionof non‐logical connections.
Human reason demands ultimate explanation; it demands a Because that admits of no further Because – something unconditioned. Pace dogmatic rationalist metaphysics, Kant concludes that theoretical reason must remain modest; it cannot know or cognize the existence of particular unconditioned entities (e.g. God or Leibnizian monads). The prevailing view goes even further; it maintains that theoretical reason cannot even know that something or other unconditioned exists. Yet I argue that Kant’s critique contains an ambitious conclusion: reason can know that something unconditioned exists among things in themselves, even if it cannot know which particular unconditioned entities exist. I reconstruct Kant’s argument for this ambitious conclusion. On my reconstruction, the argument turns on a key metaphysical assumption about things in themselves: that they are completely determinate. And far from undermining Kant's case for modesty, I suggest, this assumption partly underlies it.
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