Kant’s Deconstruction of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Abstract

N THREE ASIONS IONS I N THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, KANT TAKES credit for having finally provided the proof of the 'principle of sufficient reason' that his predecessors in German post-Leibnizian philosophy had sought in vain. They could not provide such a proof, he says, beca~lse they lacked the transcendental method of the Critique oj'Pure Reason. According to this method, one proves the truth of a synthetic a priori principle (for instance, the causal principle) by proving two things: (1) that the conditions of possibility of our experience of an object are also the conditions of possibility ($this object itself'(this is the argument Kant makes in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in the Critique of Pure Reason); (2) that presupposing the truth of the synthetic principle under consideration (for instance, the causal principle, but also all the other 'principles of pure understanding' in the Critique ($Pure Reason) is a condition of possibility of our experience of any object, and therefore (by virtue of (l)) , of this object itself. What Kant describes as his "proof of the principle of sufficient reason" is none other than his proof, according to this n~cthod, of the causal principle in the Second Analogy of Experience, in the Critique oj'Pure Reason.' Now this claim is somewhat surprising. 111 Leibniz, and in Christian WolK-the main representative of the post-Lcibnizian school of Gcrnman philosophy discussed by Kant-the causal principle is only one of the specifications of the principle of sufficient reason. And Kant himself, in the pre-critical text that discusses this principle, distinguishes at least four types of reason, and therefore four specifications of the corresponding principle-ratio essendi (reason for be in^, that is, reason for

O princípio da razão suficiente na Crítica da Razão Pura de Kant e suas aplicações: as analogias, as antinomias e os princípios regulativos

“…Em suma, a proposta de Kant do PRS nesta passagem daCRPu é de ordem transcendental, isto significa que o PRS precisa de uma interação com a experiência possível, principalmente na tarefa de determiná-la em conjunto com os objetos empíricos. Nesse sentido, temos na acepção de Kant uma aplicação válida do PRS de caráter epistemológico, graças a sua fundamentação sintética ou transcendental -sendo este ponto de vista confirmado de modo geral pelas interpretações de Melo (1992), Longuenesse (2001), Kauark (2014) e Hirata (2017).…”

“…Por sua vez, em Kant's Deconstruction of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Béatrice Longuenesse (2001) afirma que a validade universal do princípio de razão suficiente é a sua referência aos objetos da experiência perceptiva, quer dizer, o PRS enquanto princípio sintético a priori estabelece as condições de possibilidade dos fenômenos na natureza. Desse modo, a autora considera a razão suficiente fundamentada pelo método transcendental estabelecido na Crítica da razão pura.…”

“…Na tradição dos intérpretes de Kant aparece a tese de que o PRS é restringido à lei de causalidade na Segunda Analogia da Experiência da CRPu, conforme sustentam as visões de Melo (1992), Longuenesse (2001) e Hirata (2017).…”

Viewing Learning Through a New Lens: The Quantum Perspective of Learing

“…Deconstruction in its simplest form allows humans to delineate their assumptions of the world (Longuenesse, 2001). In physics these assumptions diverge into two schools of thought: classical mechanics and quantum mechanics (Bohm, 1973;Raković, 2007).…”

Adorno on Kant, Freedom and Determinism

“… 51 For an excellent account of how Kant developed this distinction in the course of his career see Longuenesse 2005. …”