Research On The Concept Of The Object In Kant's Transcendental Philosophy

This dissertation systematically discusses the meanings of various object-terms and the foundation of the reality, objectivity, and determination of the concept of the object in Kant's transcendental philosophy, with the architectonic method, mainly based on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and based on the important discoveries of today's interpreters of Kant.The structure of the dissertation includes following parts:firstly, it gives a detailed exposition to the different meaning of "transcendental philosophy" in different stage of Kant's thought, and briefly summarizes the diverse meanings of the word "object", in order to determine the dissertation's "problem domain". Secondly, it investigates the theory of intuition of critical philosophy, which is the prerequisite and foundation for the next step to discuss the problem of object comprehensively. Thirdly, after explaining the receptivity of human intuition and proving time and space as the forms of our senses in general, it preliminarily describes the meaning and character of thing-in-itself, and shows that as transcendental-affecter thing-in-itself plays an indispensable role in the construction of the model of affection, and then it responds to the famous problem posed by Jacobi and the dilemma of affection discovered by Vaihinger. Fourthly, it discusses the appearance as the object of merely empirical intuition; and through building the model of fulfilling, it reveals that the reality in appearance is the material (sensation) that fulfills the sensible intuition, and the objectivity of appearance depends on the forms(time and space) of the intuition fulfilled. However, the object given by the fulfilling above is still undetermined. After defining the meaning of thing-in-itself and appearance, it discusses three different interpretations about the relation between them, and proves that this relation is not logical but transcendental, and comparing to the epistem-ontological interpretation proposed by the dissertation, merely epistemological or ontological interpretation is unilateral. Fifthly, it puts a question that how the undetermined object of empirical intuition becomes the determined. Through transforming the above problem into the possibility of experience problem, it concludes that only categories are the origin of the determination of the object known. Sixthly, it asks why and how the categories can apply a priori to the object of experience. By concentrating on transcendental deduction in the first edition of the Critique, it makes clear that those categories are not only the conditions of synthetic unity of apperception, but also a priori foundation of the unity of time and space which makes the synthesis of apprehension possible. Lastly, it discusses the different meanings of transcendental object and the distinction of phaenomena and noumena. Through all-around examination of Critique, we find that transcendental object has three meaning, namely, thing-in-itself, the correlate of the unity of apperception, the objects of ideas. By discussing the "distinction" in two editions of the Critique, it concludes that phaenomena and noumena are not a set of new object-terms, and the reason why Kant introduces them into his critical system is that he wants to show his philosophy not only carries on traditions but also blazes a new trail.In all, it will present to us that how Kant transforms "our cognition must conform to the objects" into "the objects must conform to our cognition" by multidimensional perspective of the concept of the object in Kant's transcendental philosophy.