| Time, cause, and ground--three philosophically perplexing notions. We investigate these notions within the context of the Kantian critical philosophy: setting forth their connection and order. Thereby we discover the fundamental role of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in the critical philosophy.;A cause is a kind of ground. Finite rationality, in accord with the Principle of Sufficient Reason, seeks grounds for cognitions. The Principle of the Second Analogy presupposes the logical principle. Indeed, experience itself has a ground: the possibility of experience. And the ground of that possibility is twofold: finite rationality and the supersensible substrate of nature. This twofold opposition is reflected in the object of experience; the object is a possible object (whose possibility is produced by finite rationality) and a real object (whose ground is the supersensible). The object of experience is fundamentally not a synthetic unity--but a diversity.;We treat the Kantian philosophy as a part of a whole (the philosophical tradition) and also itself as a whole. Contradictions in the texts are resolved by an appeal to Kantian notions that allow for the integrity of the philosophy. Our investigation, through analysis and subsequent synthesis, drives to the limits of the critical project.;Finite rationality, at the level of objective thought, distinguishes between the possible and the real. The distinction is based upon distinct human faculties: reason as the source of the possible and perception as that through which the real is given. Reason forms the possibility of experience. We center in on two elements of that possibility: time and cause. Time as a pure aesthetic form and the category of causality as a pure conceptual form mutually limit each other. This delimiting bears witness to the harmonious relation between the understanding and the pure imagination. |
