Fifth assessment

Reason and world

pp. 317-333

in: Otfried Höffe, Kant's critique of pure reason, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

Many readers may begin to flag by the time they reach the "Appendix" of the "Dialectic", or may be tempted to regard it as redundant. Perhaps they are also discouraged by that "dryness' of style that Kant himself readily acknowledged (Prol., Section 60, footnote). But in fact the "Appendix" develops the important insight that although the final result of the "Dialectic" is negative in one sense, its ultimate implications are not. It is true that reason raises claims to knowledge which it is incapable in principle of redeeming, and thus may appear as a fundamentally unreliable faculty. But the anthropological optimism that "[e]verything that has its basis in the nature of our powers must be purposive" (B 670) leads Kant to examine this initial appearance and thereby to counter the fatal impression that reason as such is the source of dialectical deceptions and illusions.