Die Entstehung der Illusion in den Paralogismen
We tend to underestimate the authentically productive role of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. This paper provides an illustration of this role as it can be traced in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, which themselves became possible on the basis of a negative fiction applied to the inner sense. The main point here consists in distinguishing the negative fiction from a mere logical “abstraction.” It is therefore important to make the difference between “Absonderung” and “Abstraktion.” The former is the source of the negative fiction, of a fiction that operates “praescindendo”, as Baumgarten writes about the “facultas fingendi.” In this sense, reason is an intellectual faculty of invention. This illustration is part of a larger project aiming at an interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic based on a theory of schematism, which is somehow overshadowed by Kant’s critical intentions.
Kant Baumgarten Abstraction Paralogisms Negative fiction Schematism