Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Level 7)

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 7
• Convenor and tutor: Tim Stoll

The ultimate concern of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is with the questions 'human reason sets to itself' - questions about the nature of the soul, the existence of God, and the possibility of freedom of the will. In attempting to reach a resolution of these traditional issues, Kant developed a radically original philosophical system and manner of philosophising that has impacted virtually every major subsequent philosophical movement. In this module, we will focus on the central and most influential tenets of Kant’s critical philosophy: his doctrine of the subjectivity of space and time; his view that some mathematical knowledge is synthetic a priori; his theory that experience possesses an a priori conceptual structure; his restriction of knowledge to 'appearances'; and his criticisms of traditional rationalism and empiricism.

Indicative module syllabus

• Rationalism and empiricism
• The analytic/synthetic distinction
• Idealism and realism
• Space and time
• Conceptualism and non-conceptualism
• Causation
• Appearance and reality
• The soul
• Free will
• The existence of God

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate a deep and systematic understanding of Kant’s central arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason concerning transcendental idealism, knowledge, the structure of experience and the contrast between appearance and reality
• demonstrate a thorough understanding of the specialist principles and concepts deployed by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, their strengths and weaknesses and their distinctiveness relative to other approaches in modern philosophy
• demonstrate critical responses to Kant’s accounts of space and time, concepts, the soul, free will and God, suggesting new concepts or approaches ·
• flexibly and creatively apply knowledge to critically challenge Kant’s arguments for the subjectivity of space and time, the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge and the a priori structure of experience, while situating these arguments in relation to different aspects of Kant’s philosophy.