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

(CPR Bxxi). In fact, Kant argues, reason does know the thing in itself practically. “At least this is
so, immediately we are convinced that there is an absolutely necessary practical employment of
pure reason—the moral—in which it inevitably goes beyond the limits of sensibility” (CPR
Bxxv). “[Reason]” in other words, “is in itself not only a theoretical but also a practical faculty,
and as such is not bound down to natural conditions” (CPR B425). However, that we cannot
know things in themselves theoretically but can know them practically does not mean that
practice succeeds where theory fails. In a sense, the two kinds of knowledge run two different
kinds of businesses.
“To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its actuality as
attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason. But I can think whatever I please,
provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought.
This suffices for the possibility of the concept, even though I may not be able to answer for there
being, in the sum of all possibilities, an object corresponding to it” (CPR Bxxviin). Kant argues
that it is not enough from the perspective of either representational or practical knowledge just to
think the thing in itself in order for it to have objective validity. “But something more is required
before I can ascribe to such a concept objective validity that is, real possibility; the former
possibility is merely logical” (CPR Bxxviin). However, Kant does argue that there is not only
one way of determining the objective validity of things in themselves, namely, theoretical
knowledge; instead, there is also another way, namely practical knowledge. “This something
more need not, however, be sought in the theoretical sources of knowledge; it may lie in those
that are practical” (CPR Bxxviin). In other words, that representational knowledge denies
objective validity to things in themselves does not mean that all knowledge denies objective
validity to things in themselves. Practical knowledge in fact affirms the objective validity of
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