A Study On The B Edition Of Kant’s Structure Of Transcendental Deduction

The transcendental deduction of category is very important in Kant’s philosophy.It is not only the key to answer how a priori synthetic judgment of natural science is possible.but also the foundation of Kant’s important assertion that "man legislates nature" and lays the foundation for conceptualism discussed later in analytical philosophy.This paper mainly discusses the argumentation structure of the transcendental deduction in the second edition of Kant,aiming to give its own interpretation scheme by sorting out the text and drawing lessons from previous researchers.The reason why we only discuss the transcendental deduction in the second edition is that "only the second edition develops an idea that can be defended,and this idea is more compatible with the special structure of Kant’s thinking than the first edition",Therefore,this article only takes the second edition deduction as the base,and the first edition as an auxiliary explanation.This paper will be divided into four chapters for discussion.The first two chapters are mainly to clarify the popular interpretation of previous scholars,and the last two chapters will clarify the views held in this paper and give the author’s own interpretation ideas.Specifically,the first chapter mainly discusses three interpretation modes in the past,which are respectively "subject-objective" demonstration mode,"multi-route" demonstration mode and "one proof,three steps" interpretation mode according to the viewpoint of this paper,and interprets their representative views respectively.The second chapter mainly summarizes the interpretation mode of "one proof,two steps" represented by Henrich in detail.Although many researchers are based on the basic mode of "one proof,two steps",everyone’s interpretation is different.The latter two chapters are the focus of this paper,which basically follows the route of "one proof,two steps".However,different from previous views,this paper holds that in "one argument",Kant has given the task of deduction in Section 13,that is,not only to prove the objective validity of categories,but also to prove that categories can only be effective for empirical objects.In the "two steps",which correspond to Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 respectively,the first step(including sections15 to 20)constructs a detailed argument composed of five concrete inferences on the basis of Section 20 to illustrate the objective validity of the category for general perceptual objects based on the unity of self-consciousness.But even if the general perceptual intuition contains empirical intuition,we can only logically deduce from the conclusion of Step 1 that the category can be applied to the object of empirical intuition.Therefore,the second step is needed(including sections 21 to 26).Based on Section 26,the argument is constructed by eight minor premises.It shows that categories can only be applied to objects of experience a priori.So far,this paper completes the ultimate goal of transcendental deduction through two steps,that is,category can not only,but also can only be applied to the object of experience a priori.In the past,researchers either ignored Kant’s own structural argument in accordance with the research of problem,or ignored Kant’s grand blueprint in accordance with the text study,but they ignored that Kant himself paid great attention to structural argument.Therefore,this paper extracts the argument and thought hidden in the text according to Kant’s own writing order.This paper makes a detailed and comprehensive review of Kant’s transcendental deduction in question study and text study.