Philosophy 290-6

In this seminar, we will be focusing on Kant’s transcendental idealism, his particular version of the view that the objects of knowledge are appearances rather than things-in-themselves. We will concentrate on the relevant sections in the Critique of Pure Reason, but we will also look at other works by Kant in order to get a better sense of the philosophical use he wants to make of idealism. We will be looking closely at the arguments Kant presents for this doctrine, with an eye to determining what role is played in these arguments by the passivity or receptivity of sensibility and what role by his views about our representation of space and time. We will also be discussing a wide range of different interpretations of Kant’s idealism found in secondary literature by, among others, Strawson, Allison, Guyer, Langton, and Ameriks.