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stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

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Practical knowledge<br />

“These principles [with which the speculative reason ventures beyond its proper limits] properly<br />

belong [not to reason] but to sensibility, and when thus employed they threaten to make the<br />

bounds <strong>of</strong> sensibility coextensive with the real and so to supplant reason in its pure (practical)<br />

employment” (CPR Bxxv). When reason fails to know the thing in itself in the name <strong>of</strong><br />

representational knowledge, we do not become disillusioned with representational knowledge,<br />

but rather with reason. In other words, we become suspicious <strong>of</strong> thinking as such. That we do<br />

that, however, has an important consequence for representational knowledge. When we suspect<br />

thinking, we extend representational knowledge over what is real, über alles zu erweitern, in<br />

other words, we identify what is real with what we know representationally. However, since we<br />

only know appearances representationally, we identify what is real with appearance. Thus we<br />

arrive at this conclusion. There is nothing in itself. There is only appearance. This conclusion is<br />

in fact inconsistent. Representational knowledge demands the existence <strong>of</strong> the thing in itself,<br />

“otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without<br />

anything that appears” (CPR Bxxvii), but it is precisely this existence that it cannot deliver.<br />

Jacobi expressed this inconsistency perfectly that is at the heart <strong>of</strong> Kant’s account <strong>of</strong> theoretical<br />

knowledge. “However contrary to the spirit <strong>of</strong> the Kantian philosophy it may be to say that<br />

objects make impressions on the senses, and in this way produce representations, it is hard to see<br />

how the Kantian philosophy could find an entry point for itself without this presupposition, and<br />

make any kind <strong>of</strong> presentation <strong>of</strong> its doctrine…Without this presupposition, I could not find my<br />

way into the system whereas with it I could not stay there” (quoted in Sassen 173). But the fact is<br />

that Kant’s analysis <strong>of</strong> reason in the Critique <strong>of</strong> Practical Reason does not end with theoretical<br />

67

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