Kant on limits, boundaries, and the positive function of ideas

Abstract

It is commonly claimed that Kant's critical philosophy aims to limit reason's speculative use and its metaphysical pretensions. This paper argues that such claims should be amended in light of a technical distinction between negative limits and positive boundaries that Kant held throughout his career. Kant's only extended discussion of this distinction appears in §§57–60 of the Prolegomena, a division entitled “On pure reason's boundary‐determination”. I examine these sections in detail in order to elucidate the account of the limits and boundaries of the activity of different cognitive faculties in the Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that once we understand a key ambition of the Critique to be the positive determination of the boundary between objects of experience and things in themselves, we gain insight into the essential contribution that Kant's theory of the positive utility of ideas of reason makes to the critical philosophy.

Revisiting the Proof-Structure of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction

“…Addressing and ruling out these possible uses would be a 'dialectical' task which would entertain certain natural or reasonable conditions where the President might illegitimately seek to extend their pardoning power, and then show why such an extension is unwarrantedwhich would, again, justify these claims by appealing to the Constitution as the highest law of the land. While both analytical and dialectical tasks separately identify 'limits' (Schranken) of presidential authority, only when these two tasks are accomplished together would our analogue-Kant think he can firmly draw a 'boundary' (Grenze) that presidential pardoning authority cannot exceed (see Howard 2022).…”