A dissolução das ilusões transcendentais na "Crítica da Razão Pura": um estudo sobre as relações entre a estética, analítica e a dialética transcendentais

Abstract

This study is not meant to be merely expository. Therefore, the aim is that some questions of capital importance for the understanding of Kant’s Theoretic Philosophy not only be raised but also resolved, based on this study. The initial starting point consists of raising the following question: “Will sensitive intuition exercise the role of supreme judge in the dissolution of transcendental illusions”? According to the most reoccurring interpretation of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” the answer to the aforementioned question will be affirmative, as seems to be the case in the interpretations of Cohen, Strawson, as well as a series of others to be identified. Such a concept (according to what will be revealed in the study), will advocate, in the end, that all the questions of traditional Metaphysics (pre-Kant) are denounced by Kant as illegitimate, precisely because they can not be presented in sensitive intuition, an object which corresponds to the ideas which it, itself has constructed. Hence, Kant would have done nothing more than outline a theory of the possibility of experience (Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic) and restrict all human knowledge to this domain, in a way which assumes that metaphysical questions are illegitimate, as they are not subject to the original epistemic demands, therein outlined. This study assumes that the understanding of this problem, mentioned above, is insufficient, in that it has neglected the fact that there is, in the “Critique of Pure Reason,” not only a dogmatic announcement of, but also a justification of the thesis that all human knowledge is restricted to the sphere of sensibility (grounds of the possibility of experience). This justification is none other than the critique of transcendental illusions made by Transcendental Dialectic. Through the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, the Antinomies of Pure Reason and the Ideal of Pure Reason, the syllogism realized naturally by reason, will be revealed as the foundation for raising an incoherency regarding the non-assumption of the initial proposals of reason, rather than an inadequacy of the demands of sensibility. Such incoherencies are the transcendental illusions of the existence of the soul, the world (the totality of phenomenon) and of God – the respective objects of psychology, cosmology and Rational Theology. We will attempt to show, in this study, that the illusion of affirming the existence of these objects, in light of the syllogisms a priori, consists firstly, in an inadequacy with the initial proposals of pure reason (even if later this becomes an illusionary configuration of such existences) and only as a consequence of it; and also with the express demands of Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. Hence, this requires a Critique of Rational Psychology, a Critique of Rational Cosmology and a Critique of Rational Theology for the realization of the task in this study. In this way we will justify the thesis that all knowledge is reduced to the sphere of sensibility and will thus clarity why this illusion is considered by Kant to be transcendental, rational and inevitable. This clarification is what the aforementioned “reoccurring interpretation” fails to do.