By Katharina T. Kraus
Abstract:In his new book Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics, Marcus Willaschek offers a hugely illuminative and rewarding interpretation of the «constructive side» of Kant’s transcendental dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason. A central claim of the Rational Sources Account of metaphysics that Willaschek develops in this book and which he attributes to Kant is the thesis that reason itself is the subjective source both of metaphysical questions and of answers to these questions. Yet, by its very nature, human reason is not capable of answering these questions properly and hence finds itself trapped in unavoidable metaphysical speculations and natural illusions. In this paper, I explore the scope and the philosophical implications of Willaschek’s Rational Sources Account, and also indicate possible alternative readings for major aspects of Kant’s philosophy.
Published:
2020