The Relationship Between Kant And Transcendental Arguments

Most contemporary scholars believed that Kant had created the mature form of transcendental arguments, but he himself did not define, nor use the word "transcendental argument". But Kant's transcendental deduction and refutation of idealism and other content is still regarded as the model for later transcendental arguments to follow, although they have some differences with the later ones. This paper will examine the specific differences between the terms of Kant's philosophy and the terms of contemporary philosophy, and analyzes some contemporary arguments about transcendental arguments, and so as to clarify the relationship between Kant and transcendental arguments.The first chapter mainly introduces the domestic and foreign scholars' views on the relationship between Kant and the transcendental arguments. Most scholars believed that although Kant founded a mature form of transcendental arguments, but he himself had not used the term "transcendental arguments". However, only one person has found that Kant had used this term once in his text, and the meaning of it is quite different from the contemporary one.The second chapter deeply analyzes 3 important concepts in Kant's text of "The critique of pure reason" which are associated with transcendental arguments, that is, "Argument", "Demonstration" and "Beweis". After the analysis of the text, it is found that the concept of "Argument" in Kant's context is usually used in a negative way(including negative and neutral). And the use of "Beweis" in Kant's context is much wide, and most of them are used in a neutral or positive way, occasionally also used in a negative way. And finally, the term "Demonstration" in Kant's context is always used in a positive way.The third chapter mainly studies the view of "proof" and "argument" in contemporary philosophy. Friedrich Weismann thought that there are only arguments in philosophy, but no proofs. He has two reasons: the first reason is that philosophical arguments are not deductive, so they are not rigorous, therefore they only have limited force; the second reason is that philosophical arguments must contain reasonings, however, the premises of such reasonings can not be found. A.B.Levison countered that Weismann's requirements for a proof is too strict, and even math and logic could not achieve such requirements sometime.The fourth chapter mainly analyzes the debate about transcendental arguments between Jay.F.Rosenberg and Moltke S.Gram. Rosenberg reconstructed a model of transcendental arguments based on Kant's transcendental deduction. Gram criticized Rosenberg's R model, and he also questioned Kant's two distinctions about transcendental proof, which are the distinction of "principle/ theorem" and the distinction of "ostensive/ apagogic ".The conclusion part summarizes the above content, to clarify the analysis of the relationship between Kant and transcendental arguments in term aspect and content aspect. And further to point out the differences and relations between Kant's transcendental proofs and contemporary transcendental arguments.