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

eason. In fact, Kant thinks that the misuse of reason by representational knowledge ‘threatens to
supplant reason in its practical use.’
The Critique of Pure Reason becomes positive the moment it recognizes that it is not
reason itself, but rather reason as used by representational knowledge, namely the theoretical
reason that fails to know the thing in itself. “Criticism has previously established our
unavoidable ignorance of things in themselves, and has limited all that we can theoretically
know to mere appearances” (CPR Bxxix). In this sense, Kant does not argue that we cannot
know the thing in itself. He argues that we cannot know the thing in itself representationally.
“The true correlate of sensibility, the thing in itself, is not known, and cannot be known, through
these representations” (CPR B45/A30). In other words, “how things may be in themselves, apart
from the representations through which they affect us, is entirely outside our sphere of
knowledge” (CPR B235/A190). In other words, the Critique of Pure Reason becomes positive
the moment it recognizes that reason is an ability that can also be used practically. Thus when
reason fails in theoretical use, it opens itself up for practical use. “So far, therefore, as our
Critique limits speculative reason, it is indeed negative; but since it thereby removes an obstacle
which stands in the way of the employment of practical reason, nay, threatens to destroy it, it has
in reality a positive and very important use” (CPR Bxxv). Furthermore, that reason cannot know
the thing in itself representationally does not mean that it cannot know it practically. “But when
all progress in the field of the supersensible has thus been denied to speculative reason, it is still
open to us to enquire whether, in the practical knowledge of reason, data may be found sufficient
to determine reason’s transcendent concept of the unconditioned, and so to enable us, in
accordance with the wish of metaphysics, and by means of knowledge that is possible a priori,
though only from a practical point of view, to pass beyond the limits of possible experience”
68