Kant´s Notion of a Transcendental Schema. Lara Scaglia

main aim of this book is to provide a critical and historical inquiry into Kant's schematism chapter contained in the Critique of Pure Reason. More specifically, the book argues that Kant's schematism chapter is a necessary step within the project of the Critique. It deals with a problem of its own, one which is not the object of the previous chapters: How can categories be applied to intuitions? The author shows that the term 'schema' has an interesting and long tradition of different philosophical uses that finds in the works of Kant a point of no-return. In the philosophical works written before Kant, the notion of schema did not have a specific and distinctive meaning and function of its own but was rather used in different contexts (from rhetoric to logic to psychology). After Kant, all philosophers who speak of schemata refer in one way or another back to Kant's distinctive notion, which possesses a specific, epistemic meaning. Moreover, this book aims to provide a contribution to the understanding of the relation between philosophy and the sciences. It is by means of demonstrating the importance of the schematism chapter not only within the Critique but also from a broader perspective, deriving from the fact that Kant's doctrine of schemata had an impressive influence not only on philosophers but also on psychologists

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      Contents

Introduction

Main objectives of the study

Method

State of the art

Structure

Part I: Kant’s theory of schematism and its context

1. The notion of schema before Kant

1.1Ancient times

1.2Middle Ages

1.3Modern Ages

1.3.1Tetens’s conception of schema

1.4Conclusion

2. Kant’s pre-critical notion of schema

2.1The metaphysical notion of schema in the Nova Dilucidatio

2.2The new significance of schema in the Dissertation from 1770. A first reference to the problem of objectivity

2.2.1Schema and the forms of the worlds

2.2.2The novelty of the account of space and time as schemata in the Dissertation: Comparison with Newton and Leibniz

2.2.3The limitations of Kant’s Dissertation and the need of a further solution to the question of objectivity

3. The introduction of the transcendental forms in the Critique of Pure Reason

3.1The doctrine of sensibility

3.2The doctrine of the understanding

4. Analysis of the schematism chapter

4.1The Transcendental Doctrine of Judgement

       4.2Time-mediation

       4.3Schemata and their faculty

       4.4Schemata: images or concepts?

       4.5The table of schemata

       4.6Schemata as conditions of the significance of the pure concepts

       5. Debates over the schematism chapter in Kantian scholarship

       5.1Main criticisms of the schematism chapter

       5.1.1A redundant addition within the Critique of Pure Reason

       a)Zschocke’s focus on the Transcendental Aesthetic

       b)Curtius: the schematism chapter and § 24

       5.1.2Schematism’s obscure terminology

       a)Curtius: difficulties concerning the notion of subsumption

       b)Walsh: schemata and concepts

       c)Guyer: incongruences in the relation between categories and schemata

       d)Allison: difficulties concerning the distinctions among faculties and the variety of schemata’s definitions

       5.1.3The priority ascribed to time over space

       a)Zschocke’s criticism of time as being the only mediating function

       b)Walsh’s introduction of “organic” schemata

       c)Guyer: Schemata and temporality

       5.2In response to the criticisms of the schematism chapter

       5.2.1The necessity of schematism in the Critique of Pure Reason

       a)The distinction between the function of the Transcendental Deduction and the task of the schematism chapter

       b)“Knowing that and knowing how”

       5.2.2The obscurity of the chapter

       a)Subsumption

       b)“To be” and “to do”: defining schemata

       c)The distinction between categories and forms of intuition

       d)Categories and schemata

       e)Schemata and principles

       f)Schemata and ideas

       g)Judgement and its role between reason and understanding

       5.2.3Space and time