Critique of Pure Reason

How does the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal ground Kant’s critical enterprise?

What is Kant’s argument for the ideality of space? Do you find it compelling? Why or why not?

What is the transcendental unity of apperception? What are the elements of the synthesis and how do they work in tandem to produce experience?

Kant’s transcendental arguments are meant to overcome the limitations of both dogmatic philosophy and the skepticism of David Hume. How? Is he successful? Why or why not?

Kant’s “refutation of idealism” is meant to prove that the external world exists independently of the mind’s cognition of it. How does this argument proceed? How can Kant maintain his own transcendental idealism while disproving other forms of idealism?

In the “Transcendental Dialectic” Kant presents a series of antinomies of reason. What is an antinomy? What is Kant’s conclusion regarding the various antinomies? Is Kant’s argument convincing? Why or why not?

In the history of philosophy there are three common proofs for the existence of God: the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological. Kant believes that all three of these proofs fail and that there is no possible basis for knowledge of God based on “speculative reason.” Nevertheless, Kant has an unshakeable faith in God and puts forth his own argument for this. What is Kant’s argument? In what sense is it novel?

Kant begins “The Canon of Pure Reason” in the “Doctrine of Method” by claiming that the faculty of reason is fundamentally interested in only three questions: “1. What can I know? 2. What ought I do? 3. What may I hope?” How are these three questions related in Kant’s Critique, and how does he argue for this view? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?